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!.''•!» . 6_\j 



THE MAKING OF AN 
ENGLISHMAN 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

NOVELS 

UNTIL THE DAY BREAK 

A story of the life and death of a foreign Anarchist 
in Central Europe, New York and London, being an 
account of his conversion to Anarchism and of the 
psychological reactions of the individualist tempera- 
ment. 

Times (Boston) ; Interesting, timely and suggestive. 
New York Post : The anarchists’ club is vividly 
drawn and the probably true impression is given 
that many such’ organisations live in an atmos- 
phere of ideas in which the cause is supreme over 
any considerations of personal comfort or individ- 
ual advancement. 

Record-Herald (Chicago) : This author always is 
strong, always moving, always he produces a vivid 
and powerful impression. 

Pittsburg Post : Will interest all those who are in- 
terested in the war being waged between capital 
and labour. 

Bookman: Mr. George unquestionably has the gift 
of description, not only of places but of men. 
Kalisch, egotistic, self-confident, fearless, making 
his way from Galicia through Hungary to starve 
and fight in New York, is an impressive concep- 
tion. 

A BED OF ROSES 
THE CITY OF LIGHT 


MISCELLANEOUS 

WOMAN AND TO-MORROW 
ENGINES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 
FRANCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 
LABOUR AND HOUSING AT PORT 
SUNLIGHT 


THE MAKING 
OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


By 

W. L. GEORGE 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1914 





M 


Copyright 1914, by 
W. L. GEORGE 

Copyright in Great Britain, Ireland and British Col- 
onies and in all countries under the conventions by 
W. L. George 


ALL MINOR RIGHTS RESERVED 


I 


M/IR -5 1914 


©CI.A369235 




TO 

THE SMALL FRENCH BOY 

WHO IN 1894 FIRST CALLED ME 

JOHN BULL 

AND TO 

THE YOUNG ENGLISHMAN 

WHO IN 1902 FIRST ADDRESSED ME AS 

FROGGY 


I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 


/ 


CONTENTS 


PART I 

CHAPTER 

I RULE BRITANNIA 
, II HAIL ! rRANCE_, AND FAREWELL 

III INTRODUCTIONS 

IV MISS MAUD HOOPER . 

V BARBEZAN & CO. 

VI the heart of ENGLAND 


PAGE 

s 

14 

43 

62 

77 

113 




PART 

II 

I 

EDITH LAWTON 

• • 

• 

II 

HAMBURY 

• • 

• 

III 

BETROTHED TO AN 

ENGLISH 

GIRL 


. 151 

. 188 
. 226 


PART III 


I 

THE 

ENCOUNTER 

WITH 

THE 

SPIRIT 

• 

. 241 

II 

THE 

ENCOUNTER 

WITH 

THE 

BROTHER . 

• 

. 274 

III 

THE 

ENCOUNTER 

WITH 

THE 

FATHER . 

• 

. 294 

IV 

THE 

ENCOUNTER 

WITH 

THE 

BETROTHED 

• 

. 303 

V 

AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 

• • • 

♦ 

. 313 


vii 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 



PART 

IV 





CHAPTER 





PAGE 

I 

STANLEY^ CADORESSE & CO. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

. 361 

II 

RECONSTRUCTION 

• 

• 

• 

• 

. 380 

III 

THE LAST LAP 

• 

• 

• 

• 

. 397 

IV 

AN Englishman’s home 

• 

• 

• 

• 

. 418 


PART I 


/ 


CHAPTER I 


RULE BRITANNIA 
I 

The dark young man who had just come out of Holy- 
well Street, a little uncertain, as if he had lost his way, 
crossed the Strand with hesitation. He drew back as some 
hansoms came careering towards him, made as if to return 
to the pavement, then ran across to St. Clement Dane’s. 
He paused awhile on the island, looked at the faintly red 
sky over the Cecil. There was dubiousness in his move- 
ments, the dubiousness of the stranger in a large town, who 
is anxious to find his way and, because of his pride, reluctant 
to ask it; there was interest too, the stranger’s revealing in- 
terest in houses with unfamiliar faces, in the traffic which 
in foreign lands so perversely clings to the wrong side of 
the street. At last he seemed to muster resolution as he 
turned eastwards. 

Some minutes had elapsed since the booming of the 
quarter from the bells of the nearest church, and as the 
young man stopped again to look at the Griffin, he seemed 
to listen to the endless confirmation of the surrounding 
chimes. They came muffled and faint after their long 
journey from St. Paul’s and Westminster, shrill from St. 
Dunstan’s and the Chapel Royal; the chimes seemed crisp 
and aloof, detached in aristocratic fashion from the 
rumble of the omnibuses and the sharper clip-trop-trop 
of the cab horses. The dark young man walked slowly, 
his eyes and ears very aware of all this unfamiliarity and 
its intimations of unpenetrated mysteries. There were 
church bells and horses in his own country, but these had 
an undefinable personality of their own, not to be gauged 
by a differenc'', in the casting of the metal or in the hands 

3 


4 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


that controlled the beasts. And there were other sounds 
too, in this not over busy Fleet Street of the night, sounds 
which bore witness to the transitory importance of some- 
thing that hung over the town. 

There were no crowds. Indeed, the omnibuses rolled 
westwards, empty inside, and but half-loaded on the top. 
But every street eorner had its newsboy, aggressive and 
raucous, shouting incomprehensible extracts from the Echo 
and the Star under the dim gas-lamp. And the newsboys, 
bent double under their loads of rosy papers, fleeted past 
with an air of urgency. There was excitement in the air, 
a little fever, as if everybody were thinking of something 
that had just happened and of its reactions upon something 
infinitely more important which might happen soon. And 
because every Londoner was thus oppressed his town was 
oppressed; all these people, hurrying or strolling, those 
screaming boys, fixed, statue-like policemen, those few 
whose cookshops and public-houses were still open, carried, 
closely wedded with their cares and their merriment, a com- 
mon preoccupation. 

The dark young man was influenced by this atmosphere 
and knew its causes. He must needs have been blind and 
deaf not to have felt some excitement in this town, where 
all day he had seen men and women buy the same papers 
three times over in the hope of finding news which would 
bear out or give the lie to the dirty placard he now stared at. 
The placard roughly stuck on the stones at the corner of 
Fetter Lane bore the words: 

FALL OF MAFEKING 

The newsvendor had long deserted his afternoon pitch, 
gone back to the office to bring the false promises 
of fresh quires, but the placard remained as a dirty 
memento of disaster, to be trodden on by angry boots, 
dumbly stared at by passers-by as they tried to believe 
it was not true. All through that Friday afternoon the 


RULE BRITANNIA 


5 


stranger had listened to the wild rumour of the streets, the 
march of Plumer, his defeat, the death of Baden-Powell, 
the suicide of Eloff, all those mad untruths which rise 
from the battlefield like disturbed crows. He was stirred, 
he could hear in spirit those guns that roared and rumbled 
so many thousands of miles away, and he could smell the 
smell of battle: dust, sweat and hot rifle grease. A stranger 
and unlinked with this England, he could not drive from 
his mind the familiar photographs of those long, mud- 
coloured lines of young men, face upon the ground in the 
shallow trenches. 

He thought with pleasure of the brown lines, thrilled, 
choking a little as a man chokes when moved to an 
exultation in which are pity and some fear. For him 
the Boer enemy was the shadowy foe of the Kriegspiel, 
not real as the brothers of those real men among whom he 
walked. He had no interest in the struggle but he had to 
share in it, as he could not have watched a brown dog 
fight a white one without favouring one of the two colours. 
Though detached he was a partisan, and because he had 
eaten bread in England and heard her men speak, perhaps 
because England was quietly folding him in her clumsy, 
good-natured arms, he was for England and against the 
vierkleur. He wondered why he did not, for the sake of 
his own republican tricolour, desire the victory of the 
vierkleur: that question he could not solve; he merely 
thought of the thin brown line and stood dumb with those 
English in front of the dirty placard on the stones. 

II 

The young man reached Ludgate Hill, looked awhile 
at the railway bridge, at St. Paul’s, dazzling white in the 
moonlight and split in two by the black spire of St. Martin 
Ludgate. He turned back, and, as again he approached 
the Griflin, a premature clock chimed half-past nine. The 
stranger stopped. On the opposite pavement he could 


6 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


see three men and a girl, who looked up to the upper 
windows of a building. That moment had an undefinable 
quality of hush, as if the world were an audience waiting 
for the curtain to rise on a play the title of which they 
did not know. There was nothing to arrest these people’s 
attention, nothing to make them stop, save, perhaps, the 
secret influence of some event which winged towards them 
as they waited. The silence grew heavier, then broke. 
From far down one of the lanes the mouths of which 
frame the emptiness over the river, the stranger heard 
a sound. The other watchers heard it too, turned about, 
strained towards it, as if they could hardly believe in its 
reality. But the seconds passed, and they knew that this 
was real. They heard it, the faint voice: “ Hip — ^hip — 
hip — hurrah.” 

The four watchers suddenly became a little knot of 
people. The sound rose up again, and now unmistakable 
as if it were the voice not of three or four men but of 
many scores. “ Hip — hip — hip — ” roared the phantom 
in the lane, “ — hurrah.” And then the silence died. 
As if some magician had struck into life the very stones, 
they seemed to spurt men and women in solid black 
lumps, from every porch, from every lane, from the lit-up 
warmth of every public-house. A hundred windows burst 
into brilliance and as suddenly were obscured by clusters 
of men and girls. The phantom in the lane roared again, 
rival roars rose up; then the shouts merged in one steady, 
throbbing sound. It was the sound of cheering, and it 
grew as the news spread rapid as a stain of oil from 
their centre in Fleet Street to the farthest suburbs, the 
sound of cheering without rhythm or measure, of cheering 
so uncontrollable that the “ hurrahs ” of it covered the 
preliminary ” hips,” the sound of rival songs, of “ Rule 
Britannia ” and of “ God save the Queen,” and of all the 
things in London fit to make a noise — pianos, horns, trays 
and kettles far away, of whistles too. As the youth leaned 
back against the wall, wedged in among a shouting, incom- 


RULE BRITANNIA 


7 


prehensible crowd, he could discern in the roar the sharp 
quality of those whistles. 

At the upper windows of a newspaper office appeared 
two men who carried a white linen band. It was un- 
rolled, and the roar grew yet more massive as the crowd 
read three words, roughly scrawled: 

MAFEKING RELIEVED 
Official 

London had quickened. The desert of Fleet Street 
seemed to have sucked in all who were within the periphery 
of its voice, as swiftly and as invincibly as an electro- 
magnet collects iron filings when the current passes. As 
minutes piled on minutes, tense and fleet as seconds, Lon- 
don emptied itself into the streets from drawing-room, 
theatre and kitchen; the ever-new miracle of the Press 
repeated itself, as if the editors had foreseen the event, 
for already the tricolour poster of the Evening News war 
edition was in the hands of boys, who could be seen fighting 
their way out of the lanes among the greedy crowd. While 
some snatched at and stole the precious sheets, others thrust 
silver into the boys’ hands. The crowd swayed, unable 
to move, crushed itself against the other crowds that had 
formed as magically at the Mansion House and Charing 
Cross. Here and there, wedged among the people, was 
a four-wheeler or an omnibus, whose horses were too listless 
to take fright. Time passed, but unperceived; London had 
forgotten it, wanted only to sing, to cheer, to embrace. But 
a purpose must have formed, a restlessness have come, 
for the crowds suddenly felt the desire to move. It was 
not the desire of panic, the desire that dictates fright, 
but an orderly, if exultant desire to do solemn, triumphant 
things, to line up and as soldiers to march to nowhere, 
just to march and to feel the earth tremble under the 
trample of rhythmic steps. The Fleet Street crowd, bound 


8 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


together by the alternation of the national songs and of 
“ The Absent-Minded Beggar/’ began to move towards the 
West, and I . . . 

Ill 

Yes, I ! I, who sit at a square knee-hole desk as I 
write these lines, one of those English desks the Americans 
have invented, it was an incredible other I who marched 
with those Englishmen to that Trafalgar Square ... to 
Trafalgar Square where stands the monument of the 
admiral who crushed my countrymen. It was not then 
incredible, but it is now incredible that I can have been 
what I was, that there was a. roll in the “ r’s ” of Trafalgar. 
For I have lost the “ r’s,” and the feeling of Trafalgar, 
lost the feeling of Waterloo, lost them so completely that 
like a born Londoner I have forgotten the blood and smoke 
that soil those rich names and that they awake in my mind 
no idea save “ open space ” and “ railway station.” 

On the table is a top-hat. It is an ordinary top-hat, 
and that is extraordinary: it is absolutely impersonal, 
unoriginal, affords no key to the one who wears it; its 
brim is neither very curly nor very flat, its crown neither 
very high nor very low; it is the sort of top-hat everybody 
wears, the sort of top-hat which has a steady thousand 
brothers between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner. 
I would not know it in a crowd, and I am glad, because — 
well, that would never do ! 

It is positively an English top-hat! 

And because it is an English top-hat, and because every- 
thing in this room into which has crept a faintness of 
London fog is English, so English that it is old English, 
because I see English papers, English chintz, and English 
books, and English china, and an English typewriter (made 
in America) on a Sheraton table (made in Germany), 
I am glad that all this is English, so English that even 
America and Germany are succeeding in being English, 
just as I, the Frenchman, am English. 


RULE BRITANNIA 


9 


I am glad, and when I think of the young man who 
marched to Trafalgar Square, with a swollen, bounding 
heart under the waistcoat he had bought in the Boulevard 
Montmartre, I am amazed. It is I, yes, I am sure of it 
when I look at his photograph. Or it was I. It was a 
young man of twenty, dark, with black eyes and rather 
arched eyebrows, hair that ought to have been shorter, 
a well-cut mouth enough, shaded by a long but rather 
thin black moustache. Other documentary evidence, my 
military book, tells me that he had an “ ordinary ” forehead, 
an “ average ” chin, that he had no “ stigmata.” And my 
present figure leads me to believe that he stood about five 
feet nine in his boots, never having been measured other- 
wise, that he was fairly broad and that his hands and feet 
were rather small. 

A passable portrait this, but no work of art. It lacks life, 
inspiration, and I suspect that no effort of mine will ever 
endow it with either, for I don’t know him any more. 
He stands in a world I have left behind; he is my ghost 
and he wears the surprising clothes that ghosts wear ; 
(where do they get them.^). I understand him perfectly 
and I don’t sympathise with him, for I can’t feel as he 
felt. I see him; he walks, smiles, speaks; he makes jokes 
and he makes love; he has political ideas, and standards 
of honour, and habits, and nasty envies, and bubbling 
generosities. He is quite the most wonderful toy in the 
world, but he is not I. 

England has poured him into another man. 

I have called him “ the stranger,” and I have done 
right, for he is a stranger even to me. I know well 
enough why those Englishmen impressed him, but it is 
extraordinary that they no longer impress me. I gather 
that if he could rise again it is I, the Englishman, would 
impress him, and that I would cast over him the critical, 
albeit tolerant look of the Englishman. The roast beef 
of old England has done its work well! 


10 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


IV 

As we marched towards the West I bought a whistle 
for a shilling. And from Wellington Street onwards I 
blew it to exhaustion^ blew it with a fine sense of martial 
demonstration, tossing the squeal of it into the slaty night 
in honour of the great race which had produced Gladstone, 
Cromwell and Shakespeare. I remember those who walked 
to the right and left of me; there was a working-man of 
some sort, who maintained upon me the stare of a squinting 
eye and exhaled one of those subtle, penetrating trade 
smells which blend so curiously with the aroma of beer; 
the other was an elegant old gentleman with the clipped 
white moustache and the brick-coloured cheeks of the re- 
tired soldier. Neatly pinned across his shoulders was a 
tricolour newspaper placard. And the backs and heads in 
front! how high were the heads held, and how square the 
shoulders ! One back seemed to own no head, for it was 
humped, and so bowed that I could not see beyond it. But 
a hand belonging to that body held up on a stick a bowler 
decorated with strawberry leaves. The English hunch- 
back, carrying his ducal headgear, had his share in the 
glory of the night. 

We marched onwards, and I could not hear a word 
spoken, though mouths opened towards ears, for the roar 
of us, and our whistling and blowing of horns, and the 
tramping of our feet engulfed anything that we might 
personally feel. There was no I, and as we reached 
Trafalgar Square, where I linked arms with the odorous 
working-man and the elegant old gentleman, there was no 
They. There was nothing save an enormous exultant We, 
a We too big for classes and nationalities, a hurrying, 
intoxicated We, bursting with relief and self-complacency. 

Round and round Trafalgar Square, where the tide of 
us had swept the corners clear and swallowed up those 
people who projected from the pavement, almost in step 
as we sang — 


RULE BRITANNIA 


11 


“And when they ask us how it’s done, 

We proudly point to every one 
Of England’s soldiers of the Queen. . . 

Round and round Trafalgar Square, past the National 
Gallery, the blaek windows of which confessed that the 
custodians were shamefully in bed, past the two hotels, 
their windows blocked with people assembled to cheer us 
and to wave Union Jacks, past the full mouth of Whitehall, 
down the hill of which I could see whole fleets of om- 
nibuses, stalled, helpless and loaded with overflowing 
clusters of men and women. 

Round and round Trafalgar Square, with throats full 
of ridges choked by dust, and with sweat upon our very 
eyelashes. Upon the parapet of the Square sat half-a- 
dozen girls together, who wore all of them dusty black 
coats; as I passed I could see they were singing, for their 
mouths all worked together, and they swayed together 
from right to left and back. For us they waved their 
dirty handkerchiefs, and then they were dragged from the 
parapet and patriotically kissed. 

Round and round Trafalgar Square. The working-man, 
who still maintained upon me the stare of his squinting 
eye, dumbly pointed to a four-wheeler, stranded in Pall 
Mall East, among the seethe of our overflow. On the roof 
stood a man in evening clothes with a woman in a low 
dress. Hands in hands and face to face, they danced 
a furious dance, leaping up and down like puppets on a 
wire ; the man’s white tie had flown loose, and as the woman 
daiiced her earrings left behind them little striae of light. 
Some of her fair hair had escaped, the man had lost his 
hat; they danced in abandoned joy. 

And round and round Trafalgar Square. And round and 
round again. 

We met some mounted police and split upon them like 
waves on a breakwater. We streamed north, up Charing 
Cross Road, and, as we came, those who faced us turned 
and led us; I was still linked with the old gentleman. 


12 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


who grinned inanely now and hung wearily upon my arm^ 
and with the working-man. In front I could still see 
the hunchback: his stick had bored a hole in his bowler; 
he carried the hat with the strawberry leaves upon the 
crook and had decorated it further by sticking into the 
hole his Kruger-headed pipe. 

As we passed I could hear the singing better, thanks 
to the echo of the walls. And, drunkenly excited, I too 
sang to them that Britons never, never would be slaves. 
From the windows of the Alhambra peered clusters of 
girls’ heads, for all the ballet was there — golden curls, 
and black curls, and red curls, and gorgeous loose manes; 
I had a vision of the Alhambra as an extraordinary animal 
with two flashing eyes of incandescent burners and ^ hun- 
dred white arms outstretched. From the roof of one of 
the theatres they were firing a toy cannon as fast as they 
could load it. 

At Shaftesbury Avenue we were stopped by a cube of 
policemen, and, before we could break down their puny 
resistance, we heard the fifes and drums. We heard them 
faintly from the north, and suddenly they burst in upon 
us, leading the Endell Street Boys’ Brigade. Fife and 
drum in front, the boys marched past as if truly British 
Grenadiers; they resolved themselves into bright, smiling 
faces, glittering buttons and neat dummy rifles. 

“ Whene’er we are commanded 
To storm the palisades, 

Our leaders march with fusees, 

And we with hand-grenades; 

We throw them from the glacis, 

About the foemen’s ears 
Sing tow, row, row, row, row, row, row, 

To the British Grenadiers.” 

The boys vanished, were seized and hoisted on shoulders ; 
as we poured on towards the north I could hear the deter- 
mined band struggling to play on as the crowd bore it 
aloft. 


RULE BRITANNIA 


13 


And so through the Carnival of Friday night and of 
the next day. Carnival ! I carry for ever in my memory 
the vision of the Union Jacks on long bamboo poles, of the 
paper hats, the B.P. buttons and the patriotic handker- 
chiefs. Did I not act my part in all of it? Defend an 
English girl in Piccadilly from the patriotic ticklers? and 
see near Marble Arch a great and patriotic fight outside 
a public house? And I raised my hat to Kirk, the butcher, 
who waved his sheets from his bedroom window because 
he had nothing else to wave. 

• . . • • • g 

For two days they fought and made love and drank, 
and rode decorated bicycles, and mobbed Volunteers in so 
friendly a spirit that these took to riding in cabs. 

I have confused memories of two nights when I could 
hardly sleep, for they were rioting in Oxford Street and 
letting off fireworks; for they were rioting in the soul of 
me, the Frenchman, as I lay in bed all a-throb with the 
triumph of these English, trying to sleep and too tired to 
do so, too excited to do aught but thrill at the animal 
splendour of them, unable to repress my habituated lips as 
they hummed: 

“ And when they ask us how it’s done, 

We proudly point to every one 
Of England’s soldiers of the Queen. . . 


CHAPTER II 


hail! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 

I 

There has always been an England for me, and though 
I am or was a Frenchman, I have always been as con- 
scious of England as of France. For, all through my 
childhood, I heard the words Angleterre and Anglais 
occur often in my father’s conversation ; no doubt I 
heard him alternately revile and belaud those English, 
who mattered so very much to the Bordeaux shipbroker 
he was. If every port in the world is somewhat English, 
then Bordeaux is almost a colony of the new Carthaginians, 
those Carthaginians who are Romans too ; there is an 
atmosphere of England about the names of many who 
sell stores and sails and coal, and caulk the bottoms of 
the ships, which affects the old, while the young are subject 
to football and Charles Dickens. We are complex, we 
Bordelais, for we are dark, vivid, noisy; we twist our 
moustaches before we have any to twist, and strut every 
one like a Cyrano de Bergerac in mufti: yet, and perhaps 
because our city would decay if an earthquake were to 
lift it from the waters, we have the greedy spirit of com- 
mercial England, her vigour and her obstinacy. We like 
the rough games of the North; we drink spirits as readily 
as wine; we cash the sovereign at sight and make a profit 
on the deal. 

It is this peculiar atmosphere created an England in 
my mind, an England represented in early days by a 
Consul who, said my father, was a cochon. That Consul! 
I never saw him, never knew his name, but I felt him 
to be the grey eminence behind that cardinal of ours, 

14 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


15 


the harbour-master; he did not mean anything precise, 
for he did not mean soldiers, and it is difficult to realise 
who is who if he does not mean soldiers when you are 
a very little boy. He was just an influence, something 
solemn and potential with which you could do anything 
you chose if you owned it, something like a tableful of 
money. I have never seen a tableful of money, and I 
suppose I never shall, for I have little use for money, 
being so much fonder of those things which money buys; 
why then the British Consul was always associated in 
my mind with a table covered with coins from edge to 
edge is a little mysterious, unless there be in the very 
far back of my brain some phrases now forgotten which 
have marked its lobes, phrases in which “ Consul,” and 
“ francs,” played equal parts. It is certain that this secret 
power must have meant money, and that England must 
have shared its glory. As I grew up, England very much 
meant money, and now I, an Englishman of sorts, still 
find it very difficult to prevent the golden sovereign from 
eclipsing the pale sun of the isle. 

In those early days I became aware of England as of 
something that was partly real: not so real, of course, 
as the housemaid, Eulalie, or as the dog, a black, golli- 
woggy dog, or as the Chinese box with the eight corners 
in which chocolate seemed mysteriously to grow by 
night. No, England was real to me in the sense that 
God and the wood of the Sleeping Beauty are real to 
a small boy ; it was an undefined country, but it was 
emphatically somewhere. I once asked my father where 
England was. I must have been about six years old. 
I stood by his side in a black velvet suit with a lace collar 
of which I was very proud, for it was one of the first 
Little Lor* Fontlroi ever seen in Bordeaux; besides 
rumour said that the Parisians, those people of Olympus, 
had not the like. I watched the big ships steam down 
the Gironde towards the sea, and while my father talked, 
as he continually did, I thought that the big ships were 


16 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


like the fat, painted ducks which Eulalie set afloat to 
please me in the flooded kitchen sink. ** L*Angleterre! ” 
shouted my father. I remember nothing else. I see 
him, not as he was then but as he was in late years, 
and set that older figure upon the wharf. It is a tall, 
corpulent man, still darker than I am, who wears a silk 
hat upon massive black curls ; he has choleric dark 
eyes, his nose is aggressive ; his mouth and chin are 
hidden in a thick mat of hair that runs up to his brown 
ears. Through the lobe of each ear a fine gold circlet 
has been drawn. I shut my eyes and I see my father, 
arm outstretched towards the North, pointing with his 
stubby brown finger across the Gironde to the opposite 
shore. He talks, he talks, he shouts, he glares at me 
kindly; by periphrase and crackling Gascon adjective he 
tries to enlighten me, and I listen to him unmoved, well 
accustomed to the roaring of the metallic Southern throats. 
I feel beyond that stubby finger the unknown country: 
it is distant, for the half mile of Gironde water is my 
ocean. But I feel the mysterious country, and because 
it is beyond the water it is a romantic land. The rest of 
the episode is foggy, but memories of a white garden-wall 
enable me to reconstruct it. I feel that I looked at the 
wall anxiously, for it was very high, not less than six 
feet, and wondered whether, if I stood on the top, I should 
see the country to which went the ships. I have also an 
impression of opera glasses, delicate things studded with 
red and green stars, which usually reposed in the sacred 
drawer with my mother’s black silk dress, her Indian multi- 
coloured shawl and the little dancing shoes with the high 
heels, shoes so small that, when I once stole in and put 
them on, I found they were not much too large for me. 

I think Little Lor Fontlroi stood on the wall, and with 
the jewelled opera glasses vainly swept the northern 
horizon. The last impression of the adventure is one of 
physical pain, of maternal brutality no doubt, for my 
mother’s hand is narrow and long; its fingers are delicate 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


17 


as the limbs of a deerhound, but they must have been 
very hard. 


II 

Some years elapsed before I knew that I was a French- 
man, a subject of the Republic, for there was a distin- 
guishing quality about this English dream, a dream made 
up of fantastic anticipations; it was a quality of romantic 
realism: I saw England not as she was, but as she might 
be. I have said that England was to my mind the toy 
that my model railway was to my hands, for the uncon- 
sidered fragments of conversation which fall into the greedy 
ears of a little boy impress him indirectly. They do not 
evoke definite pictures, but they lay trains of thought; 
the word “ unconstitutional,” used by my father when I 
was eleven, never meant anything to me, but it lodged in 
some part of me, irritated me into questions to Eulalie 
which yielded no intelligible answers, into profound re- 
flections which perpetually oscillated between England, the 
moral inkiness of lies and the existence of a Divine Spirit. 
Likewise, in earlier days, England set me thinking and 
making cosmic pictures with ships, fogs, elephants and 
plum-pudding. This was not, after all, so bad a synthesis 
of England; I have always been synthetic rather than 
analytic; I have always wanted to construct, and if I 
have analysed at all it is because I wanted elements with 
which to create the lovely imaginative. 

The imaginative ! I have loved it as much as the logical. 
It was my French mother, the thin girl who came from 
Tours in the early days of the Third Republic to marry 
that noisy southerner, my father, gave me the logical. 
She came, prim, narrow, economical, dutiful and pious, 
with a neat little ordered mind, a mind very like a book- 
case. On one shelf she kept family history, conventions 
and customs; another, a large one, contained devotional 
works, which were not exactly religious works; the other 


18 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


shelves were crammed with books of reference, such as 
The Care of the Child, How to Feed Husbands, Home 
Finance. I think I understand my mother fairly well — as 
well, that is, as a man can understand a woman — and I 
have never felt there was, on the shelves of her brain, 
one romance or one book of verse. And yet, sometimes, 
when I bubble with emotion, I ask myself whether there 
was not, is not (for my mother lives) just one book, a bold, 
sinful, delicious book of passion, which she pulls out 
guiltily at night, to read a few pages. If there be such 
a book in her library, I am sure she craftily hides it behind 
the others; it must be her own and beautiful secret, which 
would cease to be beautiful if I set eyes on it. 

I like to remember her as she was in the ’nineties; 
demure, cruelly neat. She invariably wore black, much 
to my father’s annoyance, save on orgiastic days, when 
a wedding, a christening, or a visit to the theatre demanded 
grey or dark blue. I am sure that she was very unhappy 
in grey, that she thought she looked like a cockatoo. She 
was quiet, hard and incredibly efficient: Eulalie, a half 
negroid Bordelaise, might roar in the kitchen, stamp, vow 
that she would leave rather than reduce in the stew the 
percentage of oil, but my mother’s thin pipe pierced 
through Eulalie’s coppery clamour, and in the end the 
percentage of oil was reduced. If, in her rage, Eulalie 
smashed a dish, my mother would deduct the cost of it 
from her wages and solemnly hand her, with the balance of 
the money, the hardware merchant’s receipt. 

I owe you such shrewdness as I have, maman, and I 
have always loved you more than my father, even though 
he did jog me up and down on his enormous knee, take 
me to the wharf and teach me to tell which ships were 
loading for the Brazils and which were about to beat round 
the Horn or the Cape to the China seas. Not even the 
ten-franc piece he gave me on my twelfth birthday can 
outweigh the subtle atmosphere of your love — and of mine, 
for are you not maman f The mysterious French maman 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 19 

who had so much love left to give her little boy because 
she tooli to herself a stranger when she took a husband. 

If, with love, my mother gave me the logical, my father, 
with love, gave me the imaginative. He had brought it 
ashore from the phosphorescent seas which swell below 
the Line ; as a seaman he began, and as a seaman he 
ended, though he tried very hard to be a shipbroker. 
Everybody knew it, and nobody called him Monsieur 
Cadoresse: they called him le capitaine. He was, says a 
dirty old piece of paper in my dispatch-box, born in 
Bordeaux in 1838. Another dirty paper records that in 
1879 he married Marie Lutand; others show that I was 
born in 1880, that four years later my sister Jeanne came 
into the world. 

My father vanishes with the last paper, for he was 
drowned in 1893. He merely passed through my life, 
and I shall have little more to say of him, for his burly 
ghost never disturbs me; this means that he never visits 
me, for my father’s ghost would not slink by in the un- 
obtrusive English way: his ghost would come on a high 
wind, shout like the spirit of Pantagruel and borrow all 
the chains in purgatory for the pleasure of rattling them. 
He was probably a happy enough man, for he managed to 
be so busy as not to have time to think. A sea-captain 
at thirty, he impulsively bought up the decaying ship- 
broking firm of Barbezan & Co., and ebulliently boomed 
it into such prosperity that he was able, at the age of 
forty-one, to abandon his loves, his gambles, his fights 
and his drinking companions for the sake of his slim Marie. 
I have not been told the story of those heroic days, and 
therefore can do no more than guess at them, for the 
London agency of Barbezan & Co. was founded with 
“ young Lawton ” a few months before I was born. I am 
conscious of the growth of the London agency, a little of 
the decay of the Bordeaux firm. My father must have 
been failing, or “ young Lawton ” must have been too 
strong for his old French partner. I know that the activi- 


20 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


ties of my father did not affect the firm, and he too knew 
it, for, in the last year of h^s life, when the land was 
being taken from him by those bold young English hands, 
the sea began to call him. 

It called him, and then it took him. On a sunny May 
morning I went with my mother and little Jeanne to see 
the quondam shipbroker sail on a great four-master. The 
twenty-five years of his inaction had unfitted him for 
command, but the young skipper was kind; he understood 
that old Capitaine Cadoresse must be allowed to stand by 
his side on the bridge and to shout a few orders to the 
monkey-like sailors. 

I shall never forget his peculiar figure, as the little 
busy tug contemptuously towed out the big ship that 
was taking rolling-stock to La Martinique. I suppose he 
was ridiculous, for he refused to wear the blue serge of 
the Englishman; he stood, legs wide apart, his frock-coat 
flapping about him, his silk hat on the back of his curly 
black hair; a streak of red silk under his waistcoat showed 
that he wore a sash. He sailed out with his ship, a replica 
of one of those fat Marseilles sea-captains who helped 
Napoleon in the ’sixties to vie with England in the Levan- 
tine seas. He went down with the great four-master, proba- 
bly on an uncharted rock. 

HI 

And so away with my father. He fell like a leaf in 
my path, and like a leaf blew away. He did not leave us 
poor, for my mother was bought out by “ young Lawton ” 
for a lump sum and an annuity. “ Young Lawton ” came 
from England, and that was an exciting affair. I was 
called into the drawing-room, which always made me feel 
nervous and respectful because it had a strange smell, the 
smell of rooms which are seldom opened. 

I remember it — a sweet, faintly-scented smell, with a 
touch of rot in it. When I walked into the drawing-room 
on that June morning, the sun was streaming on the stiff 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


21 


Empire sideboard and couch, on the prim garnet cushions, 
the arranged footstools; but a morbid fancy seized me: 
my mother sat on the couch, dressed in black, and “ young 
Lawton ” stood with his shoulders against the black marble 
mantelpiece, dressed in black too; my sister Jeanne and 
I paused inside the door, two small figures in new mourn- 
ing. It was then the smell seized me and I was sure that 
it was the smell of a fresh grave. So deeply did this 
strike me that I hardly answered when Mr. Lawton spoke 
to me. It was some minutes before I realised him as a 
tall, slim man, who was not at all young as I understood 
the word; he was then thirty-eight. But soon he interested 
me, and I tried not to laugh (feeling that I ought not to 
laugh until my father had been dead at least a month) 
though his French was rather bad. “ Well, young man,” 
he said gravely, “ and what do they teach you at school? ” 
I did not know what to say, so replied: “Everything.” 

Lawton laughed, and one look at my mother’s shocked 
face made me realise that these English had no heart. 
Or no manners. But I liked his amazing face, for it was 
regular, clean-shaven and kindly ; of course his was a 
secretive, economical laugh, not the good roar of the South. 
Still — it was friendly, and I liked to think that he might 
laugh louder. I vaguely admired his reserve. And I 
liked his smooth, fair hair, like the coat of a well-groomed 
horse, his slim build, his calm blue eyes. Also I had never 
seen such brilliancy of polish on any French collar. 

“ Everything,” he repeated after me; “ well, that’s better 
than nothing, which is what they teach us in England.” 

I looked at him suspiciously. Surely he would not say 
that if it were true. Then, being my mother’s son, I cut 
the knot: 

“ Don’t you know anything, then? ” I asked. 

He smiled. “ No, not much.” 

His modesty surprised me. This could not be true. But 
what was the use of knowing things and not letting people 
see it? “ Don’t you want to know things? ” I asked. 


22 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ No. It’s doing things that matters, not knowing how 
to do them.” 

I pondered this for some time; it was an interesting 
idea, an idea quite outside the curriculum. But there was 
a flaw: 

“If knowing things doesn’t matter, why do you say 
it is better for me to learn everything than nothing, as 
they do in England ? ” 

My experience of thirteen years told me that at this 
stage my father, or any ordinary human being, would 
have struck the table with his fist, shouted at me, told 
me to hold my tongue. But Mr. Lawton did not move a 
finger, nor raise his voice; he looked at my mother and 
said: 

“ This child is amazing.” 

Then my mother gave us the ancient French hint to go 
away by telling us to go into the kitchen and see whether 
she was there. I was not to see Mr. Lawton again for 
many years, but I believe that I thought of him all the 
time. He was just the incredible Englishman, a creature 
of stone, incapable of anger or satisfaction. His extraor- 
dinary ideas did not appeal to me, for he contradicted one 
sentence by another; how did England get rich if she did 
not know what she thought? To do, instead of to know: 
that was interesting, but do what? Mr. Lawton had drawn 
an impressionist picture of England. In half-a-dozen 
sentences he had shown me the viscera of his country: self- 
confidence, contempt for learning, muddle-headedness and 
the habit of infinite success. Fortunately, or perhaps un- 
fortunately, some of the blanks were filled in later by 
Dickens, Walter Scott, Kipling and Conan Doyle. 

IV 

They came later, these English writers, as I worked 
my way up at the Lycee. I have little to say of my 
schooldays: I learned, and then again I learned. Later 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


23 


on I took degrees. To this day I am faintly surprised 
when an Englishman talks of his school, as if it were the 
only school, for I am quite sure that there is as little 
difference between the Lycee at Bordeaux and the Lycee 
at Lille as there is between the workhouse at Dover and 
the workhouse at York. My school treated me as if I 
were a goose doomed to produce pate de foie gras. The 
games which seem to make English schools illustrious and 
competitive, we played them, but we played them after 
school: we did not, as they do in England, steal the school 
time from the games. 

When I read the memoirs of other men I find it difficult 
to understand how it is they remember so well the faces 
and the sayings of every master and of every boy; there 
is a minuteness in their evocation which makes me 
suspicious, for those years at school, between the ages 
of ten and fourteen, seem to me so futile, are indeed so 
futile, that I can hardly see them. Or I lack the mental 
telescope. I was a prize boy, and, every year, I staggered 
down the red cloth of the platform stairs, with half-a- 
dozen books on my arm, and several crowns of laurel 
drooping over my nose. I cannot sketch those prize-giving 
days: I might say that the head master had a beard, that 
old Gargaille was fat, but that is all — and I might say 
that I learned things, but I have forgotten them, I have 
forgotten even the curriculum. 

The truth is that school was an unemotional affair be- 
cause my memory enabled me to learn readily and to 
recite facts with parrot-like facility. I did not know the 
thrill of rivalry, the agony of defeat. I remember very 
much better a magnolia in the park, which flowered every 
year and far into the autumn. Every morning I passed 
that tree. It was loaded with blossoms so large that my 
two hands could not cover one of them. They were white, 
flushed with pink, and ruffled like the short feathers of 
a swan’s rump. One day, when no keeper was about, I 
drew one bloom down, very tenderly so as not to hurt it: 


24 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


the sun had warmed it, and it felt soft and firm like a 
woman’s cheek. I buried my lips in it, and it softly 
breathed into my lungs its insidious, heady scent. A dozen 
times I think I kissed that heavy blossom, and I remem- 
bered, when the winter came and the tree stood stark naked, 
this caress of my first love. 

It was emotion called me then, emotion about to sing 
its swan-song when Chaverac died. Chaverac! Perhaps 
I have never loved anybody as I loved Chaverac. I so 
openly worshipped him, and he so obviously accepted my 
homage, that our form ceased to call us Cadoresse and 
Chaverac, but invented for us the joint name of Chavor- 
esse. I cannot even now believe that he was an ordinary 
person, this boy, one year my senior, for I could not 
have so loved him and hated him unless he had had some 
quality. Or I am too fatuous to think so: to this day 
I am sure that every woman I have looked on with favour 
possessed some charm which no other woman had, and I 
am almost as assured of Chaverac’s matchlessness. 

Chaverac was, when I first saw him, fourteen years old, 
short, dark, curly-headed, like any Gascon, or rather, 
he would have been curly-headed if his hair had not been 
close clipped. Set in his brown skin, his red lips seemed 
dark; they smiled over splendid white teeth, but it was 
his eyes held me — deep, greenish eyes with brown specks. 
I liked to think that his eyes were like pools of water in 
the sun and that the specks were the shadows of the leaves 
of overhanging branches. 

We had become friends simply, fatally. In those days 
I had lost the assertiveness of earlier years, I was shy, 
unpopular, and therefore became shyer and more unpopu- 
lar. One morning I had been bullied by three or four 
big boys and stood smarting, too proud to cry, against the 
brick wall of the play-yard. I wanted to cry, not so much 
because I had been pinched, because my arms had been 
wrenched, or because I had been jeered at, as because my 
unready tongue had cloven to my palate ; I was logical then. 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


25 


not ebullient. Now they had gone, and a flood of gorgeous 
invective was rising in me. How great it would have been 
if it had burst at the right moment! Chaverac, who had 
never before spoken to me, came close, examined me and 
said: 

“ You’ve got a funny face.” 

That is how one offers comfort when one is fourteen. 
But Chaverac had helped me, relieved the congestion: my 
pent-up invective burst from me. Chaverac listened to 
the end and said placidly: 

“ Those fellows are pigs.” 

That was just like Chaverac. He understood then as 
he always did, and it is not wonderful that I could always 
talk to him. With me he always smiled, remained unruf- 
fled; he was willing to be worshipped and willing to be 
hated; he was critical, always interested and never fired. 
At the age of fourteen he was a Laodicean, a man of the 
world, and as such he drew from me naught save .wliat 
suited him:* calm, light and debonair, he was the elective 
affinity of my impulsive roughness. We were French 
both of us, but in those days I had all the passion and 
he all the acumen of our race. 

I need not dilate upon the adventures of that year, 
for nothing of any kind befell us. Ours was the inarticu- 
late companionship of boys; I do not think he wanted to 
confide to me anything of his hopes, and certainly I did 
not know how to do so myself. Chaverac lived within 
himself, liked well enough to see me kneeling at his 
shrine, but was content to hear me talk of Gargaille, of 
the merits of Dunlop or Clincher tyres, of Lawton the 
amazing Englishman. He did not feel the need to do 
more than stimulate my conversation. I still think that 
he enjoyed the sense of mastery it gave him to know that 
he was the only person to whom I talked freely. 

My intercourse with Chaverac was therefore made up 
of vast outpourings of facts, of small ambitions, and 


26 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


proximate desires. If it was magic to meet him on the 
way to school^ to take tea (that is breads fruit and sweet 
syrup) in Madame Chaverac’s cold flat near the Quinconces, 
to tell him in the play-yard how I had got full marks for 
composition, it must have been because I was desperately 
searching for love. Having no idol, I had to make one. 
But I could make no heroism, and Chaverac would no 
doubt be to-day almost forgotten of me if his death had 
not worked in me a mental revolution. 

We were both keen cyclists, and I think I must with- 
draw, unsay that I could ever have forgotten this com- 
panion of my leisure. For who save Chaverac could scorch 
so hard as to catch up with a passing motor-car? And 
who save Chaverac could sit in the sun and mend a puncture 
without complaining? And who save Chaverac would have 
romantically refused to carry a lamp, but decorated his 
handle-bars with Chinese lanterns? It interested him to 
be romantic, I believe. Yet I might have forgotten if he 
had not died, for his death became horribly intermingled 
with my happiness. 

One Sunday morning we had cycled some ten miles 
south, along the Garonne. It was hot, and we had stopped 
on the crest of a hill, while Chaverac wiped his forehead. 

“ Hot,” he said. 

“ Yes, hot,” I replied. 

It was good to think that we should both be hot. We 
looked down upon the river as it glistened between the 
meadows like a stream of hot metal and, as we looked, 
I wondered what Chaverac thought. He did not seem 
much concerned with the sweep of the river or the purple 
vineyards, which rippled down terrace after terrace from 
our feet to the water’s edge. He was not for nature, 
Chaverac, he was for me and for what nature meant to 
me; he was content to make me his aesthetic vicar. So, 
while he still placidly wiped his round, dark head, I looked 
my fill of the ruly river, its little burden of barges, pleasure 
boats; I looked at the excursion steamer, which seemed 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 27 

no larger than a launch, and was crowded with a thousand 
black, ant-like things. 

Beyond the vineyards and the Garonne were the mead- 
ows, the tall poplars, the atrocious villas which the 
builder was beginning to shoot forth into the country. 
Beyond curtains of trees, in the north-west, was the dense- 
ness, the shadow that concealed Bordeaux. A smokestack 
was sharply outlined in the clear air, and thus graceful. 
I enjoyed a sense of peace and of attainment, for we had 
painfully climbed this hill, pushing our bicycles ; below 
us lay the broad white road that circled round it: I could 
see two bends in it, far below. We stood side by side, 
saying nothing but content, for we were alone, as two can 
be on a peak, and by knowing each other knowing all. 

It was because his eyes covered and warmed me with 
their definite look of understanding that I knew Chaverac 
to be my good companion, the being who for me alone 
had emerged from chaos. Up the other side of the hill 
a cyclist was coming towards us. I could see him grow 
as he rose, his cap ridiculously fore-shortened and his at- 
tenuated feet almost invisible. I watched him a little 
resentfully, for he, was intruding, coming uncalled into a 
world which I could share with none other than Chaverac; 
he grew and I saw him, an absurd figure with a cap 
that was too small, squat calves which no benevolent 
trousers hid. He had, and I saw it as he raised his face 
towards me, the general air of roughness of men who 
suddenly swerve across the path of bewildered old ladies, 
race motor-cars, do all the things we did, but in uglier 
fashion. The man stopped by our side, mopping his fore- 
head, then looked at us as if wondering whether two boys 
could help him. 

“ I say,” he asked Chaverac at last, “ what’s the best 
road to La Sauve ? ” 

“ Straight on until you come to the bridge,” said 
Chaverac, pointing to the hot white road. 

“Ah! There’s no short-cut, I suppose.^” 


28 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I looked at the man and suddenly felt a queer, insane 
hatred of him. I hated his flaccid, white face, his rosacia- 
touched cheeks and the straggling black bar of his mous- 
tache. I hated him because he was inadequate and uncon- 
scious of his inadequacy. And his cap, his small cap, his 
squat, stockinged calves. 

“No, there’s no short cut,” said Chaverac. He was 
polite; he always was polite, unruffled, even when talking 
to men of this kind, creatures that should be mocked and 
flouted. I felt I must speak, spit some insult at him. 

“ Unless,” I said, with a savage ring in my voice (and 
it surprised me), “ unless you go down there.” I pointed 
down the almost sheer side of the hill, through the purple 
vineyards, to the metallic river. The man looked at me, 
amazed and angry, like a bull which glares at the sun on 
leaving the toril; it pleased me to see the angry glow 
in his eyes, to feel that a flick of my tongue had done this, 
pierced the silly sufficiency which clothed his flaccid, white 
face. But I was frightened too, as one is frightened 
when one has mischievously pushed a lever and the ma- 
chine begins to work. 

‘‘What.^” said the man. “What do you say? What 
do you mean? Do you take me for an imbecile f hein? ” 

I said nothing, but looked at him in a conflict of emo- 
tions. I hated him and his ugliness, the mean, stupid 
satisfaction which could not laugh at itself because too 
uncertain and weak, but I despised myself because my joke 
was feeble. True, I had hurt him, and that was good, 
but how weak had been my sling and how despicable 
my game. Also I feared him as red rose in his white 
cheeks. 

“ Hein? ** he said again, and lashed himself into fury. 
“ I ask you a civil question and you — you answei* me as 
if I were an imbecile. I am not an imbecile/' he repeated 
so angrily that I felt intimately that he knew himself to 
be one ; “ it is you the imbecile." He took a step towards 
me. ** Imbecile! " he muttered again. And, as his right 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 29 

hand moved I involuntarily stepped back. I was driven 
back, I was afraid of him even though I despised him. 

'‘Ah? he sneered, showing yellow, irregular teeth. But 
I had stepped back and, very subtly, his self-esteem had 
suddenly regilded him. He did not strike, but shrugged 
his shoulders and turned to go down the hill. Only once 
did he turn towards the spot where I remained, frozen 
and horribly humble. Imbecile! he cried and with un- 
imaginative emphasis: “ Sacre imbecile ! Soon the white 
road swallowed him. Then he reappeared in the first bend, 
passed through it and was again swallowed up, reappeared 
in the last bend. I saw him turn his head towards me, 
his absurd little head, under the cap that was too small. 
It was too far to see his lips, but for me they moved, and 
the invisible medium that linked our warring spirits con- 
veyed to me his monotonous, inaudible insult: “Imbecile! 
Sacre imbecile! 

Chaverac had not said anything. He had watched the 
scene with phlegm. Indeed, there was almost amusement 
in his brown-flecked green eyes; he smiled jovially rather 
than ironically. 

“ Chaverac,” I faltered. But I stopped, I could say 
no more. I was overwhelmed, raging; I knew that my 
underlip trembled and that again there was welling up 
in me that frightful torrent of abuse which swells in the 
breast of the impotent. Oh ! if only the man could come 
back — I felt hot at the idea of the words I would use. 
I saw myself, too, smashing my fist into that putty- 
coloured face, tearing at that straggling black moustache. 
I was blood-lusty and Chaverac knew it, watched me with 
his queer air of critical pleasure in the sensations of others, 
watched me as if he were a vivisectionist observing the 
effects of a drug. 

Then I leapt to my bicycle and threw all my weight 
into the pedals, so that they might carry me more swiftly 
from the horrid spot. 


so THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


V 

There was a shadow between Chaverac and me. It 
was nothing at first, a trifling obstacle, an awkwardness 
such as parts master and dog when the man has trodden 
on the dog’s foot and it returns, whining and wagging 
its tail, protesting while it is caressed that the pain was 
nothing. Chaverac had ultimately caught me up on 
that fatal day and had tactfully left the subject alone; 
he had diverted the conversation to some inoffensive 
topic, such as tyres, and Bowden brakes, borne with my 
sullen silence, made jokes, pushed the memory into some 
far corner of his brain. At first I felt grateful, loved him 
for it. But he could not wash out the past; he knew 
and I knew that I ought to have struck the man, at least 
insulted him. I ought to have inflicted on him injury 
for injury, and my honour would have been clear, or I 
could have hurt him more than he had hurt me and have 
been a hero. Because I had wantonly and stupidly 
wounded him I ought to have wounded him again. I had 
not done so, and this because I had been afraid, afraid 
of gibes and blows, afraid because he was a man and I 
a boy. There was no hiding it, I had behaved like a 
coward. I knew it. Chaverac, too, knew that I was 
a coward. Each knew that the other knew, and it was 
intolerable to share the secret. 

We made desperate efforts, Chaverac and I, to shoulder 
our burden. We struggled so desperately for our old 
intimacy that we saturated it with gall. We looked sus- 
piciously into each other’s eyes, suspected traps. If I 
wanted, as I did in those days, to talk of Vaillant and 
Caserio and the other Anarchists, I held back, and the 
sweat of fear rushed to my brow, for Anarchism meant 
killing and courage, and I was a coward. I had had my 
chance and lost it. And Chaverac, too, suffered, even 
though his teeth still flashed in forced smiles ; he dared 
no longer ask me to cycle with him, for he knew what a 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


SI 


joint expedition must recall to me. We chose our subjects; 
then we spoke less, for now we had to think before we 
spoke for fear that we should open a wound. At last we 
hardly spoke at all, but walked homewards side by side, 
defensively silent. I no longer put my hand on his arm, 
for I uneasily felt that he might be sullied by my coward’s 
touch. 

We had terrible dialogues. 

“ Good-morning.” 

Good-morning.” 

Hot, isn’t it.? ” 

“ Yes.” 

That was all we had to say, we who had chattered, 
remembered, planned. Everything was going, for every- 
thing was poisoned and was withering. It was terrible to 
meet, to see in each other’s eyes a pity that was turning 
into fear. We had to meet, for we could not even part: 
the memory held us, it was our secret, the gnawing thing 
set like a canker in our affection. To part, to avoid these 
looks, would have been the heavenly relief that follows 
on the amputation of a ruined limb, but we could not part, 
because we did not dare; we could not break the link, 
for to break it would have been to confess, either that the 
one remembered or that the other understood. We could 
know, but we could not confess. 

How the horror would have ended if time had not 
stepped in as a surgeon rather than a healer, I do not 
know; in insults, recrimination perhaps, in some exhibition 
of rancour, when he would have told me that I was a 
coward and that he despised me, when perhaps I would 
have struck him as I ought to have struck my enemy, unless 
— and this was another horror — unless again I proved 
myself a coward. I hated him because I had loved him. I 
could have borne disgrace before another, I could not bear 
it before him. But time helped us and the world helped 
us. They altered the hour at which a private tutor ex- 
pected me ; they developed in the history master an interest 


32 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


in Chaverac which kept him back for a few minutes after 
the lesson, while I eseaped alone; they even strengthened 
friendships we had both flouted in the days when we were 
one. I know that, as I hurried away while Chaverac 
spoke to the history master, the voice of the past screamed 
to me that I should wait, but I hurried away with Adam’s 
averted face, for I had fallen. 

Strengthened by accident, our parting grew more definite. 
We missed each other, mistook places of meeting, discov- 
ered urgent engagements on Thursday afternoons and Sun- 
day mornings. Our fellows observed the difference, 
taunted us, asked whether “ Chavoresse ” was dead. Ah ! 
that was the true suffering, this public exhibition of our 
distress. The steadfast cruelty of the boy scented out at 
once that something was amiss, pestered us with quips 
and questions, hunted us from the playground beeause we 
feared its jeers. We were outcasts because we were butts, 
and yet we could not come together again. We were two 
Ishmaelites madly fleeing from one another in the desert. 
Even our families tortured us, tortured us with questions, 
surmises as to absurd quarrels, made barbarous attempts 
to bring together two boys who could only sit face to face, 
tongue-tied, full of hostility. 

Time passed, and with it some of the pain, for the boys 
grew tired of their game and our parents forgot our 
tragedy. There was nothing left save an awful emptiness 
where there was not yet room for hatred, nothing but 
strangling constraint. All had gone — pleasure, peace and 
interests. I skulked where I had walked merrily. Later 
only did the past goad me yet further, when Chaverac 
had become so intimately assoeiated with it that he bore 
some of the blame, when I began to hate him, to grow hot 
with rage when I saw him, to shiver with passion when 
I thought of what he had seen. My mother had forgotten. 
She knew only that I was moody and fierce-tempered. The 
doctor ordered me a sedative. I lay under my cope of 
lead. 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


33 


One Thursday evening when I had been out alone, my 
mother took me into the drawing-room. The smell of the 
grave was in it still; formal and black-clad, she was a 
worthy messenger. 

“ I have something to tell you,” she said. 

“ Ah ! ” I said listlessly, though her tone was grave. 

“ You must be prepared — it is dreadful ” 

What is it?” I asked in a choked voice. I knew — 
I knew — Chaverac 

“ He was cycling — he slipped — he slipped under a 
dray.” 

“ Is he dead? ” I can still hear my flat voice. 

“Yes — oh! — oh! — what is the matter? What is the 
matter with you ? ” 

I see my mother’s face now as I write, the fear and 
surprise in her eyes; I see her outstretched hands with 
spread fingers. She was pale, almost grey, but I know 
that warm blood had rushed to my cheeks, that relief had 
burst from me in a great sigh. I was free — free — alone 
in possession of my shameful secret. How lights must 
have danced in my eyes! 

VI 

I do not shrink from this confession. That which is, 
is. My story shows how singularly the materialistic child 
of twelve had evolved into the morbid, introspective boy 
of fourteen. But that boy had yet to grow into a youth 
and into a man, to undergo other shocks, change again as 
swiftly as the wind, gain and lose convictions, adopt atti- 
tudes and be moulded by those attitudes until they became 
part of his character. 

The death of Chaverac meant more to me than relief 
from an obsession. It snapped the links that bound me 
to my fellow man, it made love, emotion, detestable. His 
death restored to the throne logic and materialism. I had 
given my soul and, circumstance aiding, my gift had been 
flung back to me, soiled and unknowable. 


34 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I had done with the soul. When I was sixteen I had 
done with faith. I was thrown back upon my brain, and 
sudden interest in my work rose up ; unfettered by emotion 
I turned to the intellect. I decided to be rich, powerful, 
hard. I decided these things in the abstract, and then 
looked for a peg on which to hang them: that peg turned 
out to be England. 

VII 

I have said that I never forgot Lawton; indeed, the 
brilliance of his linen collar hung for years before my 
dazzled eyes. That white collar meant England, very much 
as the magnolia meant France. It meant more, for it 
was one thing to try and be intellectual and hard, and 
another to be like Lawton; I had the young generosity 
of the South, and if it could not out in friendship it must 
out in admiration for something, in an ideal. The years 
between fifteen and eighteen were crowded by study, by 
the dull memorising of facts; I gained nothing from my 
education save information and, if my companions had not 
helped me, I should have been an intolerable prig. But 
they helped me, in the indirect way in which youths help 
one another, by support mixed with chaff, for they were 
not all unsympathetic to my ever more vivid English 
dream. 

I remember three of them especially, at the financial 
school. We were then all four seventeen, keen, com- 
bative, different in some way known to none save ourselves 
from the hundred others who mean nothing to me now. 
Those others have mostly vanished; some have left behind 
them names without faces, Dubourg, Arbeillan, Valaze; 
and some have faces without names, dark, southern faces 
mostly; and yet others are nothing save a brown suit or 
a white hat. But the chosen three will never quite die 
for me ; there was Luzan, a well of intelligent and bubbling 
gaiety, who thought argument was a sort of mental catch- 
as-catch-can. Luzan writes to me once a year or so to 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


35 


this day, and tells me that my views are idiotic; whenever 
I change them they are still idiotic. There was Lavalette, 
the best dressed young man in Bordeaux: he is now the 
best dressed man in Paris, but he is not a mere fop; he 
has a discriminating if desultory appreciation of the arts 
and (this endears him) an undiscriminating but sedulous 
love for England. As for Gobot — I have lost sight of 
fat, jolly Gobot, with the round, pink face, the piggy, 
intelligent eyes, and the booming voice. Ours was a 
heterogeneous company, for Luzan was the mocker, the 
Puck, the miniature Anatole France — Lavalette was the 
old French grace blended with the new French chic — Gobot 
embodied all the solidities, stupidities and shrewdnesses of 
the bourgeois. And I.^ I was the hot, restless spirit who 
felt quite sure that he was cold and judicial. 

Of course, we never played games, we had a better thing 
to do, and that was to talk. I do not suppose we over- 
looked anything in those two years, neither faith, nor 
woman, nor politics, nor the histories of our families, their 
weddings and their scandals. We were perfectly frank 
and perfectly unashamed; we were not cribbed nor shy — 
indeed, we affected more liberty of view than we possessed. 
We were atrociously bad form, and it was splendid. One 
conversation, especially, I remember, at the end of my 
second year, when we finally settled la question anglaise, 
as we called it in pompous imitation of the diplomatic 
jargon. 

“ Those English,” said Gobot, “ are nothing but land- 
grabbers. That Fashoda affair — why, if we’d had a decent 
fleet we’d have sailed up the Thames and bombarded 
London instead of letting Marchand die in a swamp.” 

“ Which swamp,” said Luzan maliciously, “ takes the 
form of promotion, the Legion d'Honneur and a tri- 
umphant reception in Paris.” 

“ Marchand morally died in the swamp,” said Gobot, 
stodgily, “ killed by the Englishmen. He’ll never be a 
general, the Government wouldn’t dare. Our Government 


36 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


never has the insolence of the English; the English have 
that one quality and it’s useful to them.” 

“ Oh ! ” I protested, “ the English aren’t so bad ” 

“Who stole Egypt?” cried Gobot. 

“ And who let the Germans crush Napoleon III? ” asked 
Luzan. He smiled wickedly, and I knew he was playing 
with the sincere Gobot. 

“ You’re right, Luzan, and who killed the other Na- 
poleon? shut him up in an island? and who set Europe 
on him and never fought at all ? ” 

“ Pardon, Gobot/" said Lavalette, smoothly, “ there was 
Waterloo.” 

“ Waterloo ! ” roared Gobot. Llis fat, pink face became 
dark red, and his piggy eyes began to flash. “ Speak of 
it! why, it was the Prussians won Waterloo, the English 
sent hardly anybody with their Wellignetonne. England 
never fights, she sends money to hire armies, just as she 
hires men for her own, and then she swindles everybody 
when the war’s over. Who stole India? the English. 
And who stole Canada ? the English. And who talked 
of helping the Balkan Christians and let the Turk have 
them? the English. Land of Liberty, you say, Cador- 
esse? Did the English help Poland? No! we helped 
Poland while the English were filling their pocket with 
North America. And wasn’t it the English fought China 
to keep up the opium trade? the poison trade? And 
wasn’t it the English who taught the Indians to drink 
themselves to death? Hypocrites, liars, Bible-mongers,” 
roared Gobot. “ They don’t send out missionaries, they 
send out commercial travellers. And all the women drink.” 

We were silent as Gobot suddenly laid before us the 
result of the elaborate history we are taught; as his voice 
rose I felt a foreigner in my own country, for I had no 
share in this smouldering fury of the French, who have 
always found in their way a rich island nation, a nation 
grabbing islands merely to prevent other nations from 
travelling freely, a people always ready to lend money to 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


37 


their enemies, to side, in the holy name of splendid isola- 
tion, with anybody whom they could exploit. As Gobot 
went on, raucous, and therefore weakly absurd, I suddenly 
saw him as small, thought of him as one of Kipling’s 
monkeys whom the other animals would not notice. 

“ All the same,” said Lavalette, patting his perfectly 
oiled head, “ they are the only people who know what a 
gentleman is.” 

We discussed the gentleman, as expounded by me; he 
was a queer creature, as I took him from my reading, 
mainly a person who hunted the fox, and told lies to save 
the honour of women. We discussed Protestantism and 
whether it was better than the Catholicism we all of us 
practised, but did not believe in. Gobot was still raging 
historically, for Luzan had him well in hand and was 
drawing him back and back, from treaty to treaty and 
defeat to defeat; they had got to Blenheim, and by and 
by would get to Agincourt, to Crecy. Meanwhile, as we 
all four walked slowly round and round the little park, 
Lavalette and I were better employed on English litera- 
ture, which we could both read in the text. 

“ Those two,” said Lavalette, tolerantly, “ they don’t 
understand; what’s the use of talking to people who read 
Walter Scott in French? ” 

I looked approvingly at Lavalette. I do not think any- 
body else had ever so wholly satisfied my aesthetic tastes. 
He was then nearly six feet tall, very slim, and, because 
narrow-chested, graceful as a reed. His long neck carried 
a well-poised and very long head; his mouth was small 
and rather full-lipped; it made me think of a tulip. But 
better than his glossy black hair, his delicate hands, which 
he exquisitely manicured, I remember the sorrowful gaze 
of his grey eyes. Immense eyes with the opalescent whites ! 
how kindly you appraised and discounted my crudities ! 

“ They do not know,” said Lavalette, “ and that’s why 
they talk. Why, the way they hate the English shows 
they don’t understand them; also it shows that they are 


38 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


inferior to them, for one never hates an equal, one respects 
him.” 

“ That’s true,” I said; “boxers shake hands before they 
fight.” 

“ They do. That’s the English way. You find it in all 
the books, in Kipling, in Conan Doyle; you find phrases 
like ‘ playing the game ’ and ‘ not hitting a man when he’s 
down.’ ” 

“ You don’t find it in Dickens,” I said. 

A long pause ensued while we thought this out. 

“ No,” said Lavalette at last, “ you don’t. And I’ve 
read him through, almost. That’s curious.” 

“ What’s curious ? ” asked Gobot from behind. 

We told him. He did not know Dickens well, having 
read only David Copperfield in French, but pointed out 
that perhaps Dickens did not play games. 

“Perhaps that’s why,” Luzan suggested; “games make 
a difference.” 

Then we all four spoke together, Gobot because he al- 
ways talked and Luzan because he always contradicted; 
but Lavalette and I had got hold of something and were 
very excited. 

“That’s the answer,” I said at last; “the Englishman 
is a peculiar animal because his temperament has been 
altered by games. He thinks life is like football.” 

“ With rules and rights — ” said Lavalette. 

“ A Protestant in the playing field — ” said Luzan, with 
a sniff. 

“ A Protestant everywhere,” I said, as if illumined. 
“ He’s always ruled by something, by a code, a habit. 
That’s why he had a Parliament first, that’s why he does 
not fight duels — ” 

“ He wants to save his skin,” growled Gobot. 

“ Are duels dangerous ? ” Luzan asked, thus diverting 
Gobot from the attack. 

Lavalette and I walked on, full of a new realisation; 
this idea of the rule of games being made the rule of life 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


39 


was fascinating; one felt one had suddenly come upon the 
meaning of this cold, restrained English life. Of course, 
it was restrained, for the people respected the rules. 

I think we discussed England for the rest of the after- 
noon; Lavalette persisted in being literary, in comparing 
Walter Scott with Dumas. “No fire,” he said, “ except 
in Ivanhoe, but elegance. Now Dumas brawls in taverns. 
His cardinals are braggarts and his kings are merely vulgar. 
Of course, Walter Scott is a bore, but such a gentlemanly 
bore.” 

I think we understood Walter Scott pretty well, the 
severity of his courts and the high-falutin sexlessness of 
his historical romances; and Conan Doyle, too, we under- 
stood. His Englishman was Sherlock Holmes, the cold, 
hard, shrewd and brave man, and Watson — how English 
was this splendid, stupid Watson who could listen and do 
what he was told. Dickens we suspected as an oddity 
and a sentimentalist, but he made London seem romantic 
and very comfortable. As for Kipling, Lavalette and I 
almost gave him up, or rather we gave up his passionate, 
poetic side, tried to draw from him a picture of another 
Englishman, the calm Anglo-Indian, so haughty, so 
efficient, and so brave. 

We created an Englishman from anything that came 
handy. It was, on the whole, a fairly good lay-figure. 

VIII 

And so, through these early years, when the world was 
dawning, I saw life as a map divided up into diverse coun- 
tries ; one was the land of art, another the home of 
business, a third was marked “ love.” The first interested 
me in rather stereotyped fashion: my affeetion for the arts 
rested upon my rebellion against our graveyard drawing- 
room; the second drew me a little more, for it was mixed 
up with England: commerce and liberalism in ideas made 
up for me the soul of. the island. As for love — well, I am 


40 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


French, so I did not suppose there was more to know about 
it than I did know when I was eighteen. Love had not 
stolen upon me softly like spring into an English hedge; 
it had come flaunting, brazen and mercenary in the train 
of the senior rowdies of the school. If I suspected now 
and then, when I thought of Agnes and David Copperfield, 
that it had some fugitive charms not to be found in Bor- 
deaux, I thrust back the idea. Intellect was the real thing, 
woman was the pastime. I knew all about her and all 
about love. I knew nothing about either, and I might 
never have known if I had not come to these islands where 
love burns with a clear, white flame, a flame which does 
not scorch as does that of the French brazier, but beau- 
tifully and intimately warms. 

IX 

Then Mafeking. But I have told Mafeking. 

“ Land-grabbing again,” said Gobot when I came back; 
cochons/* I smiled in an exasperating and superior 
manner. I knew. 


X 

Unroll again, film of my life, and show me my dead self 
in movement. You show me a young man in a white 
smock, sweeping the barrack-yard: the army. Then the 
young man in a small room at Montauban, in red trousers ; 
his belt and bayonet lie on the bed; his lips move as he 
whispers English irregular verbs: “throw, threw, thrown 
. . . blow, blew, blown — ”: idealism. The young man 
again, in full regimentals, with half-a-dozen more of his 
kind; they are at the brasserie, have had a little too much 
to drink; the young man holds upon his knee the tolerant 
singing girl who goes round with the plate: seeing life. 

We sat in the drawing-room, my mother on the right 
of the black marble mantelpiece, Jeanne on the left, I 


HAIL! FRANCE, AND FAREWELL 


41 


by the table. I noticed that our three chairs marked the 
three angles of an equilateral triangle. The magic of the 
prim room seemed to compel geometry in attitudes. 
It possessed the one fender on which I had never put my 
boots, and I had never smoked in it. I tried, that morning, 
for the regiment had given me assurance, but there was 
no zest in the performance, or the damp air of the room 
had aifected the saltpetre. I looked at my mother, slim, 
pretty and black-clad; at my beetle-browed sister, realised 
our group as a family council, a dry, loveless thing, fitly 
held by the stiff Empire couch and the garnet-coloured 
footstools. The room smelled of death, and suddenly I 
knew how glad I was to say good-bye to this hardness 
and formality, to go to England, free, living England. 

“ And so you are going to-morrow, Lucien,” said my 
mother. “ I hope it is for the best.” 

Oui, maman/* I said, thinking of the morrow. 

“ Your father always wanted you to go into the branch. 
I had hoped you might stay here and go into the house; 
still ” 

My mother paused; she had never been able to realise 
the change, to accept that “ the house ” was in London, 
that the Bordeaux firm was the branch. For her, the 
Bordeaux firm was still august, dominant, as in the days 
of my father and his frock-coats. 

“ Still I suppose Monsieur Lawton knows best. You’ll 
write to me, Lucien.” 

" Oui, maman.” 

I knew I ought to have said more, but life and adventure 
waited. 

“ You will get on, of course. Your father always hoped 
to leave you the house. Monsieur Lawton knows that it 
was understood; so you must work hard, Lucien. You 
are very fortunate, for we are not dependent on you: 
Jeanne will have a little money, and we shall marry her 
soon.” 

I glanced at Jeanne, who sat playing with her fingers. 


42 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


She was rather a pretty girl, small and thin like my 
mother, demure, but she had under heavy black brows my 
father’s splendid eyes. She did not move when my mother 
calmly announced her intention to “ place her ” with some 
man. 

“ There’s no hurry about that,” my mother resumed. 
“Jeanne’s only eighteen. Have you packed.^ No? 
Well, you must do it to-day. And mind you take brandy 
for the crossing. Your thick socks will come home to- 
night.” 

I was going to thank her formally when she suddenly 
did something she had never done before: she sighed, and 
allowed one large tear to roll down her cheek. 

“ Maman! ” I cried. And before I could hesitate I 
had broken the coldness, I had thrown my arms round her 
and we were both crying, while Jeanne sobbed as she 
knelt by my mother’s side and held my hand. I was 
twenty-two, “ an old soldier,” and I wept. But, even as 
I wept and promised my mother to write every week and 
return every summer, I could hear the roar of the English 
beyond. 

XI 

The cliffs of Folkestone stood up, white and green, 
exactly like the French cliffs, yet unlike. 

The wet, green country, the oast-houses and the hop- 
fields were left behind. Townlet after townlet, deceiving 
me, promising Xondon, then dwindling into fields again. 
Then denser townlets, smokestacks, building plots. The 
sea mist had thickened, was becoming yellow. 

I saw the houses in their gardens, then the bronze 
Thames in the moist, yellow air, the Houses of Parliament 
standing out like black bluffs against the pale sky. 


CHAPTER III 


INTRODUCTIONS 

I 

** This is it, Mr. Cadoresse,’" said Mrs. Hooper. 

She had preceded me and now stood in the middle of 
the room, while I remained on the threshold. I had a 
moment’s hesitation for this was the first time I had seen 
an English bedroom; the hotel at which I stayed during 
Maf eking week and the semi-public rooms of the Lawtons’ 
house had not prepared me for the homely feeling of this 
sleeping place. For a reason I shall always feel and never 
quite understand there is a difference between a bedroom in 
an English house and one in a French flat; if the English- 
man’s house is his castle his bedroom is his keep. But 
Mrs. Hooper was talking again in gentle tones: 

“ I hope you’ll be quite comfortable, Mr. Cadoresse. 
Anything you want — there’s the bell near the bed. I sup- 
pose you’ll be wanting to get ready for dinner, so I’ll 
leave you if you’ve got everything.” 

“ Thank you,” I said. “ I don’t want anything. A fire, 
perhaps.” 

It was October and I felt chilly. When I left Bordeaux 
the magnolias were loaded with blooms. Here the air was 
misty and raw. 

“If you like, Mr. Cadoresse, though we don’t generally 
light fires before November.” 

“ Oh ! it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” I said. I 
felt reproved. I had broken some law. I wanted to 
apologise, to explain abundantly, but I found that Mrs. 
Hooper had gone, quietly, without adding another word; 
she impressed me by her negativeness. She wore no nota- 

43 


44 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


ble clothes: a dark blouse and skirt, so far as I remember; 
she dressed her grey hair neither very tight nor very, 
fancifully ; she did not gesticulate, nor welcome me warmly, 
nor appear churlish; she did not call me “Sir” in pro- 
pitiating manner, nor was she familiar; she was neither 
servant nor hostess. I have met many Englishwomen like 
her: the number of things Mrs. Hooper was not and did 
not was amazing. But I did not think about her very 
long: my room interested me. My room had an air of 
permanence, for I would then have been embarrassed to 
find other quarters in a private house. A stranger, I was 
like a shipwrecked sailor for whom the desert island be- 
comes home. Against the wall furthest from the window 
was a black and brass bed; before the window stood a 
small table, covered with an old red cloth and bearing a 
swivel-mirror; a marble-topped washstand with a yellow- 
tiled splasher, a mahogany chest of drawers at the foot 
of the bed, and three mahogany chairs made up, with a 
brown-painted hanging cupboard, the furniture of the room. 
All these pieces of furniture struck me as too small, too 
compact; they left the room bare, save for thin red cur- 
tains at the window; the room felt too light, too airy. 
I missed the heavy canopy which shut me in when I slept 
in my French home, the blue eiderdown, the darkness, the 
comfortable thickness of the stuffs. 

And yet Mrs. Hooper had not attained the sanitary 
horror of modern English houses; I was spared the 
linoleum that chills the feet and the distempered walls 
that chill the heart. At least she had laid down an old 
red-and-brown carpet, which was probably not very well 
swept; on the yellowish rosebud-decorated wall she had 
hung three engravings: “ The Peacemaker,” “ In the 
Garden of Eden,” and “ The Jubilee Procession,” while 
a red, blue and gold text tried to induce me to remember 
that the Lord was my Shepherd and that I should not 
want. 

On the whole, however, I did not dislike the room and 


INTRODUCTIONS 


45 


I was introspective enough to realise that I would get 
used to it, that the dog can, after a while, sleep well in 
the cat’s basket. It was nearly seven. I began to unpack 
my clothes, to lay them out on the bed, hurriedly, for my 
evening clothes, my smoking as I still called them, seemed 
scattered among the others, while my shirts, French 
laundered, had mostly had a bad time on the journey. 
When, at last, I was ready, I realised that I somehow fell 
short of the Lawton ideal. I was a neat, dark, slim youth, 
not ill-looking, but my ready-made black tie did not content 
me; my shoes were well enough, but I had that day seen 
a fashion-plate in a newspaper which proved that on these 
occasions Englishmen wore pumps; and, in some undefina- 
ble way, my linen did not reach the Lawton standard. It 
never did quite reach it until four years had elapsed, when 
a sympathetic man told me that I should send it to a 
laundry. Incredible! 

At last I stood in front of the mirror, in the midst of 
the quantity of clothing two small trunks can discharge, 
critically considering the candidate for the English quality. 
I found I had not greatly changed since that historic night 
when I marched down Shaftesbury Avenue with a thrilled 
heart, while (and I reminiscently hummed the refrain) the 
Englishmen sang; 

“And when they ask us how it’s done, 

We proudly point to every one 
Of England’s soldiers of the Queen.” 

" Pas mal” I said aloud to the figure. I liked the arch 
of my eyebrows and the increasing thickness of my mous- 
tache. Good dark eyes, too, but I suddenly determined 
to get my hair cut the very next day. Still, the hair 
would have to pass for that evening, so I opened the 
door and, as half-past seven struck, followed a pungent 
smell of cooking to the ground floor. 

I passed between the red-papered walls to the hall, 
which was decorated with a pair of buffalo horns, a gaunt 


4G THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


hatstand and a print of the Heenan v, Sayers fight. Then 
I hesitated in front of the doors, for nothing told me 
which was the dining-room. To open the wrong door 
would be annoying, because it would make me look a fool. 
I should not have been in the least bashful if, on opening 
the wrong door, I had found Mrs. Hooper in a bath but 
I could not have borne being made ridiculous. 

Suddenly I heard muffled peals of laughter ; a door 
opened, the laughter became shrill, and a young girl, 
running out, nearly rushed into my arms. I do not think 
I shall forget that first picture. She came, light, bounding, 
and she is fixed in my mind upon one foot, a Diana 
Belvedere; she was laughing still, and I could see the 
quiver of the light on her brown curls, the white glitter 
of her teeth, and the sparkle of her dark eyes. But, as 
I looked, her expression and her attitude changed. The 
eyes were cast down, long lashes lay on full, faintly 
blushing cheeks; the mouth smiled no more, and I saw 
nothing now but the very pretty and very prim English 
miss. We stood face to face for two seconds, while I 
searched my brain for a suitable English sentence and 
some qualification of the rule that in England you must 
be introduced, and as I searched I thought I had never 
seen anything so delightful. But the English miss eased 
the strain, threw me a glance which took me in from 
forehead to shoe, smiled and, with much dignity, passed 
me by. 

As she went she murmured: “Good evening. Monsieur'' 
(alas! she pronounced it approximately “ Mersser ”) and, 
with persistent dignity, climbed the first three or four steps 
of the stairs. Then dignity seemed to desert her, and 
she ran upstairs, on sole and heel, loud and gawky as a 
boy. This did not kill the charm but intensified it by 
making its elements incongruous. I had no time to think 
more of her, for the room she had come out of was evi- 
dently a bedroom; at least I could see a bed in it, so I 
boldly turned the handle of the other door. 


INTRODUCTIONS 


47 


Three people looked at me with extreme calm. I thought 
of the calm of fish. One of them was Mrs. Hooper, as 
I had seen her half-an-hour before; the other was a girl, 
younger than the other, not at all pretty, but still worthy 
of a glance, for she had flaxen hair, china-blue eyes and 
a milk-white skin; the third, an elderly man, I judged to 
be Mr. Hooper. He was a small, thin person, as undecided 
in colouring as his wife; his mild eyes made me think at 
once of the younger girl, obviously his daughter; he stood 
leaning against the mantelpiece where burned no fire (of 
course, not in October), in a black frock-coat the silk lapels 
of which were not very fresh. Mr. Hooper was rather bald, 
looked about fifty; he seemed so mild, so genial, so unruf- 
fled, that I wondered whether an immense aggressiveness 
lay under his mask. 

I had not time to analyse further, for I was struggling 
with an internal rage. I, Lucien Cadoresse, was wearing 
the wrong clothes, was being ridiculous. I thought of 
running from the room, of putting on my tweed suit again, 
but then I should have been more ridiculous. It was a 
ghastly situation and I nerved myself to bear the chorus 
of protest. But there was no chorus ; Mrs. Hooper said : 

“ Allow me to introduce you to my husband, Mr. 
Cadoresse, and to my daughter Louise.” 

Mr. Hooper said : “ Glad to have the pleasure ” ; 

Louise, or Lulu as she was called in ordinary circumstances, 
mumbled and blushed. Then the girl I had met in the hall 
came in, now quite demure, was introduced to me as “ My 
daughter Maud.” Fully mustered, the family was doubt- 
less going to protest against my clothes. But Mr. Hooper 
said: 

“ Very cold for the time of year,” and rubbed his hands. 

“ Much colder than in Bordeaux,” I replied, expecting 
this to lead up to an allusion to my bare shirt front. 

But Mr. Hooper began to question me on “ the meteoro- 
logical conditions in the South of France,” as he called 
them. I satisfied him as well as I could, which cannot 


48 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


have been completely, for Mr. Hooper had one of those 
thirsts for miscellaneous information found mainly in the 
City of London and in the North Country, which nothing 
can ever assuage. Of indifferent health, too poor to indulge 
in games, bound to daily labour which he was not vigorous 
enough to realise as uncongenial, Mr. Hooper had devel- 
oped a desultory acquaintance with every branch of knowl- 
edge, from Sanskrit to wood-carving; he knew some French, 
a little more than no German; he could quote six Latin 
tags and one Greek one, but he couldn’t spell that one; 
he was fond of history, that is history a Vanglaise, as it is 
expounded in A Favourite of Henry XXIX, and the like; 
he knew where was Taganrog, for he had had to look it 
up, but could not at once locate Moscow on the map; he 
liked to know how many dollars went to the pound and was 
quite content not to know how many gulden went to the 
pound. Mr. Hooper’s mind was an unlimited patchwork 
quilt of ideas and facts ; occasionally the ideas clashed 
and the facts did not dovetail, but those little imperfections 
did not interfere with the progress of the quilt. He never 
looked for a piece with which to fill a hole when the facts 
did not accord: a new piece always went end-on to the 
others and the mental quilt grew larger and larger; it 
would have smothered him in time if he had not continually 
lost bits of it, which made it manageable. 

Mr. Hooper loved a fact. In later days I repeated to 
him the joke in The Man from Blankley’s, to the effect 
that the area of the Great Pyramid is exactly equal to that 
of Trafalgar Square. He did not laugh, but with great 
relish added the fact to the quilt. 

While, that evening, Mr. Hooper entertained me with a 
schedule of compared temperatures which showed that 
isotherms had escaped his attention, I examined the room 
and its inhabitants. The dining-room was emphatically an 
English room; it had red paper, well covered with inferior 
oil-paintings of still life and steel engravings of British 
regiments holding the pass or the ford, as might be. Op- 


INTRODUCTIONS 


49 


posite the window was a large mahogany sideboard, awk- 
wardly carved, on which stood a cheap tantalus, some 
siphons and the bread platter; there was also a bottle of 
ready-made dressing. The mantelpiece carried an elaborate 
oak overmantel, on which were accumulated brass ash-trays, 
little china pigs, and some Goss, two bronze candlesticks 
which did not match, some prospectuses and letters. Into 
the looking-glass were pushed two or three cards, one of 
them an invitation to a Conservative meeting at a titled 
lady’s house. This I know, for it stayed there many weeks. 
Yet the room did not displease me; it was cold, the chairs 
were ugly, the carpet felt thin and the table appointments 
seemed common, the plate dirty under the glaring gas, but 
it was comfortable, it was untidy. I had left formality in 
France, and I knew it when those people spoke to me so 
quietly, without trying to entertain me, when they re- 
frained from commenting on my evening clothes. 

Mr. Hooper said: “ The dinner is late, my dear.” 

Mrs. Hooper said : The girl will bring it up in a 
minute, Alfred.” 

I looked at Lulu, who at once blushed, then at Maud. 
Maud’s eyes met mine with a boldness that suggested either 
absolute innocence or deliberate challenge; I found out 
later that it contained a little of each: that mixed quality 
is an English monopoly. I looked her full in the eyes, 
which I could now see were dark-brown, analysed her 
in detail; she stood the test very well, and it was singular 
to find her almost a woman and so much of a boy, for 
her figure was slim and straight, and yet I foresaw that 
within two or three years it would show all the gracious 
curves of maturity. Under my cool inspection, which took 
in the thin brown stuff of her blouse and the low dressing 
of her hair, she remained composed, but at last she smiled 
at me from the corners of her mouth, and looked down 
at her feet. My heart was beating a little when the gong 
was struck in the hall and the little maid entered, carrying 
the soup. 


50 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I regret we cannot offer you hordoovers/’ said Mr. 
Hooper archly, “ but radishes are not in season. We 
might have had some sardines, though; Ethel, where are 
those sardines you opened for breakfast on Tuesday.^” 

“ You know you had the last of those this morning, 
Alfred,” said Mrs. Hooper. “ Besides, sardines don’t keep 
when the tin’s open.” 

“ Melon,” said Mr. Hooper. 

“ How can you, Alfred ! Melon in October ! Mr. 
Cadoresse will have to live as the English live,” said Mrs. 
Hooper, “ and of course we can’t expect him to like our 
cooking.” 

“ Oh, I’m sure it is excellent,” I said, as I tasted the 
soup. It seemed excellent, for I had never before tasted 
clear soup devoid of grease; this particular soup was just 
oily water, but it was strange, and therefore good. ** I 
want everything that is English.” 

“ You shall have it,” said Mr. Hooper. “ I flatter myself 
we are a true British household, though of course we are 
not prejudiced people. Oh, no, we are quite cosmopolitan, 
Mr. Cadoresse. I remember once, when I was in 
France ” 

I listened while Mr. Hooper gave me in detail the list 
of the dishes he had partaken of at the “ Hotel de France,” 
at Neuchatel in 1896. Meanwhile the two girls were car- 
rying on an animated conversation in low bones. 

“ Yes,” said Lulu, “ there she was. Mother, with the 
pink hat on she wore on Sunday.” 

“ Orange, you mean,” said Maud. 

“ When I say pink I mean pink,” Lulu replied. 

“ And when you mean orange you say pink,” said Maud, 
sprightly if a little acid. 

“ Pink,” said Lulu. Her china-blue eyes were bovine 
in their obstinacy. 

“ S’pose you think I can’t tell pink from orange,” said 
Maud. 

“ And you wouldn’t believe it, the whole thing only cost 


INTRODUCTIONS 


51 


two francs/’ said Mr. Hooper. “ Now in Soho it’s even 
cheaper, but I don’t care for those places. I always feel 
the kitchens are not quite nice.” 

He spoke the last words between inverted commas; Mrs. 
Hooper laughed dutifully and I joined in, feeling it was 
the thing to do. 

When the roast leg of mutton was brought in, on a dish 
that was too large and flooded with warm brown water, 
Mr. Hooper carved, remarking: 

“ Mutton thick, beef thin.” 

The girls were still wrangling. 

Fathead,” Lulu muttered. 

Maud looked at me with a faint smile that clearly said: 
“See how I suffer,” and replied: “Think I’m colour- 
blind } ” 

I thought I should take the opportunity and said : 

“ The brilliance of your eyes. Mademoiselle, demon- 
strates that there is no justification for the accusation.” 

There was a pause, during which Lulu blushed at the 
compliment addressed to her sister, but Maud did not 
blush: she made a bread pill and gave me a little smile. 
Mrs. Hooper said: 

“ Now, Mr. Cadoresse, no French compliments. You 
will turn my young ladies’ heads.” 

“ My head’s all right, Ma,” said Maud. 

“ May be it is, and may be it isn’t,” said Mrs. Hooper, 
fondly gazing at the curly brown head, which I judged to 
be unruly. I was helped to baked potatoes, caked with 
grease, to nameless green food, which had apparently been 
moulded and then cut into slabs. The water jug was 
handed me without question, and I missed the usual wine. 

“ How did you leave your dear mother, Mr. Cadoresse.^ ” 
asked Mrs. Hooper. “ Mr. Lawton said she was very sorry 
to part with you.” 

“ Oh, very,” I said. 

“ She’s not thinking of coming over to England? ” 

“ No, I don’t think so,” I replied. 


62 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ Wellj I’m not surprised. It seems so easy travelling, 
sitting in a railway earriage and doing nothing, but it 
does tire one so. Why, I remember when I went to Paris 
with your pa, girls, I was that tired I had to lie in bed 
for two days, and you’ll never believe it, but your pa had 
gone along to the bathroom the first morning when I 
heard a knock at the door. I thought it was him and said, 
‘ Come in,’ and in came the waiter with my breakfast. 
I don’t think that’s usual, is it, Mr. Cadoresse.^ ” 

“ Oh, quite,” I replied. “He would come to the bath- 
room if you rang.” 

There was a short silence which showed me that I had 
gone too far, and the position was not eased by Maud, who 
suddenly burst into a fit of giggles, which recurred at 
frequent intervals. 

“Stop it, Maud,” said Mrs. Hooper; “silly.” 

“ Can’t, Ma,” the girl gasped. 

“ Well, if you can’t,” s^aid Mrs. Hooper resignedly, 
“we’d better change the subject. Yes, I was that tired, 
Mr. Cadoresse, I couldn’t even go and see that church ; you 
know — the church they call the little cakes after ” 

“ The Madeleine ” I said at random, for I do not know 
Paris well. 

“ Yes, Madeline. But I went to the shops.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Lulu softly. “ I’d love to go to Paris and 
see the shops.” 

“ They are lovely shops, aren’t they, Mr. Cadoresse ? ” 
said Maud, who was recovering. “ Oh ! I’d love to go 
to Paris.” 

“ You must wait for your honeymoon,” said Mr. 
Hooper, facetiously. 

“ Don’t see why,” said Mrs. Hooper. “ They’re no 
better than Whiteley’s, I’ll be bound.” 

While stewed apples and custard were being served, a 
friendly debate on the merits of French and English shops 
took place between the father and mother, but Maud and 


INTRODUCTIONS 


58 


I exchanged frequent friendly glances and covert smiles. 
Lulu had lapsed into sulky silence, and steadily ate. 

II 

It was a singular atmosphere, made up of the contest 
between ambient dulness and the sparkle of Maud. It 
is perhaps too much to say “ dulness,” for my first im- 
pression was one of sobriety, sedateness ; the conversation 
was absolutely stupid, but then it was exactly the con- 
versation that would have been held at a French bourgeois 
table where — and I have never so far convinced the Eng- 
lish that I speak the truth — the arts and scandals are 
passed over. All the foreignness of it lay in the Hoopers’ 
abstention from inquiries which would have struck me as 
normal enough : not only had they not mentioned my 
unsuitable clothes, but they had not asked what my father 
was, whether he was alive, how much he earned a year; 
they had not asked me whether my sister was marriageable 
and whether she had a doty they had not even tried to find 
out what I thought of them and their city. 

Those English people, did they care.^ 

I realised that these were petits bourgeois, that Mr. 
Hooper could hardly be worth more than six or seven 
thousand francs a year, and yet their manners were ex- 
cellent. As they ate, they dropped no food. Yet classes 
did not mix in England: therefore they must have copied. 
I considered Mrs. Hooper faded, dowdy, stupid, yet per- 
fectly dignified ; and Mr. Hooper limited and dull, yet 
bound by some code not to trouble his guest with questions. 
They were copying, those two; they must be copying, or 
I was drawing incorrect conclusions from my abundant 
English reading. In those days I had not discovered gen- 
tility and the tests by means of which the genteel man is 
distinguished from the gentleman. I felt almost humble 
in presence of these self-effacing people, and I rather re- 
sented their lack of interest in me. 


54 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


But those English people^ did they care? 

Lulu I dismissed as a stupid girl of sixteen_, and I was 
right. She was a very English type, and an ordinary one, 
for most English girls are stupid, and that is why they 
are so seductive. They are not hard, purposeful, as are 
our women ; they do not know anything, and therefore 
they are grateful when anything is told them. They are 
the perfect slaves we love; they are seductive because they 
are innocent. 

Lulu, however, was not seductive that night; she might 
have been in my eyes, for she was so unaccustomedly pink 
and white and flaxen-haired, but there was ^laud. Lulu 
was born to be overshadowed by Maud, and, I suppose, 
knew it. While I analysed the Hoopers I looked at Maud; 
often our eyes met, and I fancy she did not try to escape 
my gaze; indeed, on finding that I looked at her small 
hands as she made bread pills, I am sure that she became 
yet more industrious at the game. Little hands, I have 
not forgotten you; you were broad in the middle, but you 
tapered to a point, and small white fingers too, you tapered, 
you blushed at the knuckles and joints, and you glowed 
into coral at the tips. Small, delicate hands, with the 
girlish roughness that made me think of crepe de chine, 
you were warm and animate; folding upon my hands, you 
were tender as the wings of a fledgling bird. 

Ill 

We passed upstairs. More of England was revealed to 
me, for the entire first floor was made into a drawing-room; 
the folding doors had been removed and, as the gas brackets 
gave but little light, the room seemed very large. It was 
the glory of the house, it was as glorious as our own draw- 
ing-room, and it claimed brotherhood with it; nothing was 
missing except the smell of the graveyard, and I realised 
that whatever may differ from country to country some 
things are not national, but human. The drawing-room was 


INTRODUCTIONS 


55 


white and gold, the paint was rather dirty and the gold 
tarnished, but still it was white and gold. There was a 
large settee, covered with tapestry; two armchairs and a 
number of small ones, either gilt or cheap mahogany, were 
dotted about. On a shelved black bracket stood an elab- 
orate tea-set, which was never used for tea; there was, on 
the mantelpiece, an imitation Sevres clock, out of order, 
between two tall blue jars filled with pampas grass. On 
the walls were framed photographs of pictures by Burne- 
Jones, also portraits of the Queen. In the “ ell ” stood the 
cottage piano, the back draped in a piece of Japanese 
printed cotton. I was chilled by the rigidity of it; while 
Mrs. Hooper sat down by the mantelpiece and began to 
embroider a tablecloth, the two girls nudged and whispered 
on the settee. I was very uncomfortable, for I had had 
no coffee; it was the first time in my life I had had no 
coffee after dinner. Perhaps because of that I moved 
restlessly about the room, went to a table in a corner on 
which were heaped albums and books. I opened some of 
them at random, looked at photographs of ugly old people 
whom I did not know ; albums and books were dusty, as if 
seldom opened, but they interested me, and I noted titles, 
unknown authors. I found Ships that Pass in the Night, 
and Under Two Flags, some sixpenny editions of Merriman. 

Mr. Hooper came in, said good-night. This, he regretted 
to say, was the Debating Club night. He was expected 
to move the vote of thanks after the debate. Quite an 
important paper : “ Machiavelli.” 

I promised to come on another occasion. Mrs. Hooper 
embroidered steadily, I dared not smoke, I heard the girls 
whisper mysteriously: 

“ Of course, I wasn’t taking any,” Maud confided. 

Mumble from Lulu. 

“ No fear ! ” vigorously from Maud. 

“ Maud, my dear,” said Mrs. Hooper, “ won’t you show 
Mr. Cadoresse your picture postcards ? ” 

Maud did not seem unwilling. She took from the small 


56 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


cabinet under the shelved bracket a large cloth-bound 
alburn^ laid it on the book-table after pushing away the 
dusty literature, and sat down. I came and stood beside 
her while she began with pretty demureness to make me 
look at every card. 

“ That’s from Gib,” she said, “ and here’s another from 
Malta. I put ’em all together cos they came from my 
cousin Tom. He’s in the navy.” 

I detected some pride in her speech and became absurdly 
jealous of Tom. 

“ We always thought he’d go for a soldier,” she added, 
“ but he didn’t. There’s another he sent from Bombay 
with a nigger on it. Old Funny-hat I call him.” 

There was an interval during which “old Funny-hat” 
and “ going for a soldier ” were explained. My English 
was good, but it wasn’t exactly English, and it did not 
include this kind of phrase. Indeed, my early intercourse 
with Maud was one long (and usually inadequate) English 
lesson. 

“ Here are some from France. Oh, I get a lot of those 
from pa’s friends — Paris, Dieppe, Troovil ” 

I was not listening to her. Leaning over as she turned 
the pages, I looked at the delicate white neck on which 
clustered the brown curls, at the small hand which pointed 
at the cards. She must have known, for she chattered 
on, giving me no opportunity to speak, and from time 
to time she looked up at me, with a faint smile on her 
lips and a soft but arch look in her humid brown 
eyes. 

Because she was a stranger she was adorable. Then I 
thought of coffee. 

“ I get ’em from everywhere. You could have sent me 
one from Border if I’d known you before you came ” 

“ You silly kid,” said Lulu, looking up from the pink 
evening paper ; “ you couldn’t know him before he came, 
could you ? ” 

“ One has to mind one’s P’s and Q’s with Miss Clever, 


INTRODUCTIONS 57 

Mr. Cadoresse/’ said Maud to me. Angry, she was adora- 
ble, for she flushed. 

“ Don’t bother Mr. Cadoresse, dear,” said Mrs. Hooper, 
who still embroidered; “perhaps he’s seen enough.” 

“ Oh,” I protested, “ it’s very interesting. Show me 
some of Spain, Miss Hooper. I’ve been there.” 

Maud looked up at me; there were in her eyes appeal, 
triumph and gratitude. “ Here’s one of Saint Sebasting,” 
she said. And as she pointed with the right hand she laid 
her left hand on the table, as if by inadvertence, so near 
mine that I could feel the warmth of it. The minutest 
distance separated them. Yet it was a distance, and when 
hands do not touch it matters very little whether there is 
between them a yard or the tenth of an inch. I leaned 
over her to look at the card. 

“ Bullfights,” I said with an effort. And, as I moved, 
our hands touched. They touched very softly, but 
definitely. The whole side of her hand was against mine, 
and this was very wonderful. We did not move. For 
some seconds we were silent while each could feel the 
beating of the other’s blood. 

“ I shouldn’t care to see a bullfight,” said Maud 
smoothly. “ Horrid, messy things. And it’s so cruel to 
the horses. We wouldn’t have ’em in England. Our 
Dumb Friends, S.P.C.A., all that sort of thing, you know.” 

She chattered on while I stood by her side, quite unable 
to speak, my throat dry and my cruel desire for coffee 
quite forgotten. She chattered as if she were perfectly 
cool, while my hand felt numb and rigid. And still she 
did not take away her own. 

These English girls, do they know when men touch their 
hands 

Suddenly she shook her brown curls, moved her hand; 
the spell was broken. She laughed, and I gave a heavy 
sigh. 

“ You’re not saying anything. Penny? ” 

“ Penny? ” 


58 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Explanations. Then Mrs. Hooper suggested that Maud 
should sing. She went to the piano. She played a rollick- 
ing, rhythmic tune, a tune of the “ Waiting at the Church 
type; not one word did I understand, but I knew that I 
wanted to beat time while I watched the white throat swell 
and the brown curls dance staccato. 

“ Very pretty,” said Mrs. Hooper, after Maud had sung 
in an unexpected fit of sentimentalism, “ Good Bye ” ; 
“ very pretty. Lulu, you might run upstairs and find me 
my other reel of red cotton.” 

Maud began to improvise a melody of her own — a gay, 
splashy thing, very much like the first tune she had played. 

“ How long that girl is,” Mrs. Hooper murmured. 

Maud broke down in her impromptu, began again in 
another key. Mrs. Hooper went to the door. 

“ Can’t you find it, Lulu.^ ” she called up the staircase. 
Then, after a pause: “ It’s in the top drawer — oh, never 
mind, I know where it is ” 

Mrs. Hooper had gone. I was alone with Maud, alone 
with a young girl. It was impossible. How could one 
be alone with a young girl — but then I remembered Eng- 
lish liberty. Of course. Maud looked at me round the 
corner of the piano. In the bad light I could see her 
smile. 

“ Baby can’t see. Baby blind,” she said in another 
voice and a different language. “ Baby go quite blind if 
Frenchman don’t light other candle.” 

I leaped rather than walked to the piano, but my hand 
shook so that the match missed the wick. 

Shaky hand. Late nights, naughty, naughty,” said 
Maud. 

I looked down at her, and she smiled at me. I bent 
towards her, and still she smiled without moving. My 
hand went out, groped on the keys of the piano, found 
her fingers, and grasped them. 

Ouch,” she murmured ; “ you’re hurting.” 

But her smile had not vanished, and a very faint, pleas- 


INTRODUCTIONS 


59 


ant scent came from her hair. Without a word I slipped 
my arm round her shoulders and kissed her, trembling a 
little, clumsily, half on the lips and half on the cheek. 

She remained passive for a second, then drew back. 

“ Now then, saucy,” she said, but she was still smiling. 

When Mrs. Hooper returned with Lulu and the red 
cotton, the two candles were lit and Maud was banging at 
a noisy tune. 

IV 

I found sleep difficult. I had stood a long time at the 
window, looking into the desolate little garden. The fog 
had gone, and under the rays of the moon I could see 
against the wall the dim shadow of a faded rose, while 
two bushes of Michaelmas daisies reared up, straggling 
and gaunt, in the stone-spattered flower bed. Many things 
occupied me; I had not forgotten that I had had no coffee, 
and now that my excitement was past the desire seized 
me again. Indeed, I am not sure that my memory of the 
epic kiss was not tainted with the gnawing need. When 
I think of coffee I feel like an opium-eater. If ever I am 
sent to gaol I shall go mad. 

I did not at once think of the kiss, for I am a sybarite; 
I like to recreate my impressions one by one and as they 
formed, and I like to give them climaxes followed by flat 
periods; I like them to pass through my mind like a well- 
ordered play. And I want my climaxes to be larger and 
larger and more significant, so that I may ring down the 
curtain upon my dream-play, while I bow with actor and 
author and clap my hands in the royal box. So I reso- 
lutely thought about the old Hoopers. I had not, I felt, 
analysed them very well, and how could I? I had none 
of the English measures with which to appraise them, I 
could estimate them only according to French values. But 
the prestige of England clung to them; I was enormously 
impressed by their calm, by their disregard of my views 
and their regard for my comfort. I was paying twenty- 


60 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


seven and six for board and lodging, and it seemed as if 
I were paying my money for hospitality. 

Mr. Hooper was more evident than his wife; I was sur- 
prised by the generality of his interests, by his spareness 
and his youth. In a rigid, unimaginative way he was still 
studying politics, he took trouble to know something of my 
people, he was seeking. True, when he captured an idea 
he slew it and embalmed it. Butterfly hunter ! But still, 
he was inquiring, he wanted to know, and there was 
romance even in the despair of his dry quest. His wife 
troubled me more; I saw her as gentle, refined, courteous; 
I gathered that she had no power of action, but much power 
of resistance. Nothing would break Mrs. Hooper: if an 
earthquake had precipitated Westminster Abbey into the 
Thames I felt she would have remarked: “What extraor- 
dinary weather we’re having — I wonder where I put that 
bodkin.” Obviously she could control Lulu, who had left 
no impression oh me at all, except that she was sulky, but 
could make nothing of Maud; I could see that she loved 
Maud, thought her an infant prodigy, that Maud’s singing 
was more than an elegant accomplishment, that it was a 
family rite. While I watched Maud’s full white throat 
swell, I had also noticed Mrs. Hooper’s head nod in time, 
and seen her smile at me when the songs ended. “ There ! 
what do you say to that? ” was in every smile. 

But evidently Mrs. Hooper did not greatly care whether 
she controlled Maud or not. The girl could do no wrong, 
and — perhaps this English aloofness extended to the family 
circle. Perhaps they let each other alone, just as they 
let the stranger alone. The whole evening seemed to be 
a lesson in non-intervention. Mr. Hooper had gone without 
explaining in great detail where he was going to, when 
he would be back; Lulu had read a novelette without being 
asked what it was and whether it was interesting; and 
when Maud could not cease giggling because I had made 
an undesirable joke, Mrs. Hooper had said, “ If you can’t 
stop, we’d better change the subject.” It was so amazing 


INTRODUCTIONS 6l 

that I hesitated to conclude that the English do not care 
what happens. 

One things though, I felt assured of : Mrs. Hooper would 
certainly care if anything happened to Maud. This liberty 
of theirs must be limited by some custom or rule, and I 
felt sure that she would not condone the intrigue into which 
I was entering. Of course, this was an intrigue. . . . 

“You haven’t done badly,” I remarked to the elegant 
figure in the looking-glass ; “ you’ve started a love affair, 
you’ve only got to go on.” 

I felt certain that I had nothing to do but go on. Of 
course, Maud was deceitful and hot-blooded; I shouldn’t 
have much trouble with a girl like that, for she was ready 
to fall into any man’s arms, and if she wasn’t — I laughed 
contentedly: I knew all about women and their ways. One 
feeling I did not have, and that was one of hesitation in 
presence of adventure; Frenchmen are not made like that. 


CHAPTER IV 


MISS MAUD HOOPER 
I 

If there were in London no Oxford Street it would 
have to be invented, for without it straying groups of 
foreigners would prove a perpetual nuisance to Streatham 
and Hornsey. I was introduced to Oxford Street by the 
inside of a hat, which advertised the fact that it had been 
bought there; in later years the street became definite, 
thanks to a chromo taken from a Christmas number. 
That grateful chromo showed “ Oxford Circus on Christ- 
mas Eve,” a wonderful vision of carriages, splendid horses 
driven by liveried coachmen, enormous policemen, and gay 
young women with rosy cheeks, mostly dressed in furs, fol- 
lowed by dandies who did not disdain to carry parcels. 
There was a fox-terrier, too, for fox-terriers were fashion- 
able in those days, and “ bits of blood ” in the shafts of 
hansoms; burly Pickwickian coachmen obviously made 
jokes (of course, bus-drivers did). There radiated from 
this early product of the three-colour process a jollity, an 
irresponsible love of food, drink, light. Indeed, I was a 
little disappointed because London did not turn out to be 
as like a Christmas card as I expected: but I was not very 
disappointed, for it had another magic. 

It had the magic of Oxford Street. It was not that 
Oxford Street was so very broad, for it would be lost in 
the Champs-Elysees, or so very beautiful: it was for me 
more than a fine street — it was an English person. The 
Americans had not yet got hold of it, smirched it with 
facades of new brick and stucco, or Portland stone; its 
houses were not very high, and they were houses, not ware- 

62 


MISS MAUD HOOPER 


63 


houses. I liked the shops and their poor show of plate- 
glass_, the crude display of their wares; it was interesting 
to compare our idea of showing off boots, which is to put 
three patent-leather pairs in a nest of green velvet, with 
the hundreds of boots, the festoons of boots, the bewilder- 
ing array of shoes for the road and shoes for the bed, 
of slippers and top-boots, of dandified pumps, and rough, 
spiked hoofcases for the golfer and the football-player; 
I could stand and gloat over this kind of show; it was 
enormous, Falstaffian; it suggested large appetites, needs 
and the fulfilment of needs. Oxford Street was more 
English than Bond Street because it was not modish; it 
did not receive the clothes of the French and Viennese, 
the enamel of the Russians, the promiscuous patents of 
America; beyond a little Italian glass and some Indian 
goods, the latter pardonable, after all, because colonial, 
its wares were English. They were rather dear, neither 
beautiful nor ugly; they were abundant, and most of them 
would last for ever. For ever! that feeling still clings 
to Oxford Street, to those undefiled portions which threaten 
to crash down into the road, and it is incredible that they 
will ever so crash. They have always been there, those 
shops which intrude into the houses, and I guess their 
intimacies, their corridors, the clumsy steps which join 
house with house until an emporium arises. Above the 
drapers are the ghosts of dead kitchens, of the parlours 
and the best bedrooms; and there are doorsteps on which 
once stood grave merchants, reading the Morning Post, to 
know what they should think of Mr. Pitt. 

I still have, as I walk that street, the sense of the 
illimitable which is bound up in the streets that run from 
east to west. On one side I can feel the rich places, their 
parks. Stoke Poges and its churchyard, Wiltshire, rolling 
plains, Bristol and the open sea; on the other I wind away 
with Oxford Street, through business and slum, to the 
docks, the Thames that is like the tongue of the sea, and 
then again the sea, with, upon its breast, the big ships filled 


64 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


to the bulwarks with East Indian spices, and furs, and 
bales of wool. Over all and, as it flaps, making in the 
wind sharp sounds like the slam of a loose door, is the 
Union Jack. 

Eternal England, that no revolutions ruffle, who return 
to regimes discarded because you never discard that spirit 
of order and power which lies under the regimes, you are 
like Oxford Street. You are indirect, you do not drive 
through international life as did the bolder Rome; while 
Rome built those roads which despise rivers and mountain, 
you built Oxford Street and its vassals from the Bank 
to Shepherd’s Bush, tortuous, broken by angles, here wide 
and there narrow, inconvenient but persistent; you give 
way to the obstacle — then surround it; you fight no battles 
with the soil, and yet you conquer it, indomitably driving 
your road, quite careless of beauty and content if the road 
can serve, unwilling to take a path other than that of 
least resistance. You erect no monument, you are too 
busy being a monument. Conscious of ancestors, you do not 
strive to have ancestors, and because you are too big to be 
conscious you are ancestral. 


II 

Almost every day I walked along Oxford Street, from 
my home with the Hoopers in St. Mary’s Terrace, along 
the Edgware Road, until I reached Fenchurch Street, the 
bewildering City which housed Barbezan & Co. So much 
did it bewilder me that I confided my impressions to the 
not very sympathetic Maud. But she was not entirely un- 
sympathetic: indeed, she was, for an English girl, strangely 
curious of my affairs; I would not have talked of them 
with her if she had readily responded to more amorous 
moods, but I was ready enough to share with her the 
impressions I accumulated so rapidly that they hurt: not 
to talk is always dreadful for a southerner, and I think 
I Would rather talk about anything than not talk at all. 


MISS MAUD HOOPER 


65 


For Maud was proving a puzzle to me. When I went to 
my room and acted the dream-play, which ended in the 
adventurous kiss, I thought I saw quite clearly the sequelae 
of the deed. I thought of other kisses, less rapid, more 
reciprocal; I imagined responses, had no difficulty in con- 
juring up a softer and yet mysteriously aggressive Maud, 
who would tell me that she loved me, that I had but to 
ask to be given. 

I had no doubts at all: a girl who so openly attacked 
me the first evening could not be difficult to win. I was 
not in love with her; if she occupied my mind at all, she 
was merely one of my comforts. She was the woman 
sent by the kindly Providence of Lovers to fill, for the 
time being, a certain part of my life. She was charming, 
provoking and — convenient. It was thus with a degree 
of confidence that I threw one arm round her shoulders 
when, the next evening, I met her on the first floor land- 
ing, outside the bathroom where she had washed her hands. 
Just before I did it she was smiling; she looked deliciously 
demure, for her eyes were half-closed, and her attitude, 
as she rubbed against each other her still moist palms, was 
almost quakerish. But as I touched her, her expression 
changed. She put out both hands against my shoulders, 
pushed me away : 

Now, then, Mr. Frenchman, none of your monkey 
tricks.” 

I laughed, tried to break her resistance. Coquetry, of 
course. But there was something else in the coquetry — 
obstinacy, I supposed, for we fought silently on the land- 
ing for some moments. I was the stronger, drew her to me, 
but she bent her head down, pushed the curls into my face. 
I kissed the warm brown hair, and, as I did so, she half 
freed herself, and I saw this was not coquetry, for she was 
flushed and the pretty mouth had set in a straight line. 

“Let me go,” she whispered; “leave go, can’t you. I 
won’t have it. D’you think I want you messing me about 
No fear! ” 


66 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


She wrenched herself free^ and I looked at her in 
amazement. 

“ Crumpling my blouse/’ she grumbled, as she patted 
it. “ What d’you take me for.^ Rag doll.^ or what.^ ” 

“ But, Maud ” I faltered. 

“ Not so much of your Mauds, Mr. Frenchman. Have 
a shave and try Miss Hooper.” 

I was puzzled by the seemingly irrelevant advice to 
“ have a shave,” and, while I thought, took her hand. She 
did not withdraw it, looked at me with a faint smile. 

“Sorry you spoke, aren’t you.^ Well, you needn’t look 
sulky about it.” 

“ I am not sulky,” I said. 

“ Yes, you are. Cross old bear. Baby quite frightened.” 

I understood that I was forgiven, but I knew better 
than to accept forgiveness: the only way to gain absolute 
forgiveness from a woman is at once to offend again. So, 
without another word, I pulled Maud towards me; there 
was a slight show of resistance, soon vanquished. But, 
before I could kiss her, her lips rested a second on my 
cheek, firm and cool, and she escaped: 

“No more, Mr. Frenchman,” she said, with some dignity; 
“ I’m not out for choc’lates, just had grapes.” 

She ran down the stairs, laughing, and I went to my 
room. I had something to think about: Why had she 
repulsed me? Then kissed me? then repulsed me again? 
Coquetry I had met before, but not this kind of coquetry; 
I knew the methods practised by my own countrywomen, 
by which man is encouraged, discouraged, then heartened, 
and the French rack is no kinder than the English: but 
in those cases there had been no prefacing caress. With 
the first kiss came the downfall of the defence, the acquies- 
cent rout and capture of the defender. It was not so 
here : apparently an English girl, or at least English Maud, 
could with impunity hold the hand of the man who at- 
tracted her, even clasp him in her arms; she could rely on 
her own powers of resistance. 


MISS MAUD HOOPER 67 

Strictly speaking, I did not “ learn about women from 
’er ” ; I learned about her from other and later women. 
I understood her much better after parting from her and 
was surprised to find her different from her old self when 
I met her again. Maud was a very ordinary English type, 
a type to be found in none save Anglo-Saxon countries; 
she was unawakened in the passionate sense, and I do not 
think that the kiss of Prince Charming himself could have 
roused her from her sleep. She could attain a passionate 
stage, to maintain the metaphor, akin to somnambulism, 
but she was never awake. She was made up of two 
strands, one positive and the other negative. The first 
was the strand of interest, money, adornment, cheap ex- 
citement, eager vanity, and there are many splendid mates, 
English, Latin and Slav, who have such a strand in their 
composition: la Dame aux Camelias was so made, and 
Cleopatra somewhat. But it was Maud’s negative strain 
made her different from any Latin, Teutonic or Slav 
woman I have ever met. Her capacity for resisting 
caresses, for showing that she did not want them, her 
ability to live without love, without emotion, her self-con- 
tained and neutral attitude, I have met these traits again 
and again and believe in their reality only because of their 
recurrence. 

Paradoxically enough, Maud, or I will say the Maud- 
type, is aggressive. It prepares for seduction by clothing 
itself as little as it may, by using the powder, the rouge, 
and the scent of the man-huntress; it ogles, it rustles, 
it drops its voice to tender murmurs, it invites, it clamours 
for capture — no, not capture, pursuit. For the array for 
seduction is not the prelude of desired defeat: the inten- 
tion is to restrict to a sham fight the reality of the engage- 
ment. The Maud-type is the exact counterpart of the 
fowler, the man whom victory bores when it is in sight — 
victory, that is, in the accepted sense. The victory of the 
Maud-type consists in instigating attack, defeating it and 
instigating it again; if the victim shows signs of flagging 


68 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


he must be cajoled, and minor privileges may be granted. 
If it be clear that he is almost disgusted, that he will 
not attack the main position, an outpost is suddenly evacu- 
ated; he occupies it, surprised, advances and is at once 
repulsed, as if he had been ambushed. But the Maud- 
type never intends him to win: the struggle is real, and if 
the victim suddenly perceives that he is being tricked and 
retires in anger he is immediately forgotten when other 
quarry presents itself. My intercourse with Maud was 
made up of these continual strategic advances and retreats. 
So determined was she to hold me, for purposes she hardly 
defined to herself, that I was often surprised by the extent 
of the concessions she would make to achieve her object. 
She had moods in which minor surrenders and acquiescences 
were so many that my triumph seemed assured — but were 
they moods or policies? I do not pretend that such girls 
are entirely devoid of emotional feelings, but these are 
buried very deep ; there is gold in some abysses of the sea, 
and it is therefore untrue to say that there is no gold 
there: but nobody has ever been able to dive deep enough 
to secure it. There were days when Maud would of herself 
take my arm in a quiet street, others when she spontane- 
ously offered caresses; she seemed to yield, but she never 
yielded. I do not think she wanted to, and I am not 
sure that she could. She had a fierce dislike of love in 
its robe of red and flame; she understood it solely in the 
flirtatious pink and tinsel of musical comedy. She was 
afraid of it, because she felt it to be brutal, big, and 
earnest. She did not want anything to be earnest, she 
wanted things gay, comic. But she would make con- 
cessions to me so that I might continue to flatter her by 
pursuing her, so that I should pay. The Maud-type knows 
one thing very well — that man must pay, and pay for 
nothing save exasperation. It does not consider, as does 
its analogue in America, that man is bound by chivalry 
and disinterested courtesy to supply candies, novels, ice- 
cream and seats at the theatre; but it does consider that 


MISS MAUD HOOPER 


69 


man must supply the English equivalents of those things 
on a limited pleasure contract. It wants them so desper- 
ately that it sometimes gives more than it intended, and 
in later life it often takes for granted that it must give 
everything for greater delights, such as the use of a 
motor-car, fine clothes, and Brighton holidays, but through- 
out it does not want to give. It wants to take. If it can 
take everything for nothing, good; if everything for some- 
thing, unfortunate ; if it must take something for everything, 
it does so resignedly. Between Maud and me there was 
an ever open contract which we never signed; she never 
taught me to bargain, for I am of those who give heartily 
and take greedily, asking no questions: she was all im- 
plicit bargain. 


Ill 

In the name of English liberty Maud was sent with me 
on the eve of my entry into Barbezan & Co., so that I 
might find in romantic Oxford Street the shops I needed. 

“ Funny sort of shirt you’ve got on,” said Maud ; “ stew 
’em in tea in Border, don’t they } ” 

I assured her we did not stew shirts in tea. 

“ Well, I only asked. And, of course, you’ve got to get 
your cuffs sewn on. No, you can’t get a ready-made tie 
here. Can’t tie it.^ Don’t be silly. I’ll show you, Frenchy; 
anybody can see you aren’t sailors over there.” 

“ My father was a sea-captain,” I said, rather curtly, 
for this annoyed me. 

“ Well, he might have taught you to make knots. My 
cousin Tom — he’s in the navy, you know — he taught me. 
Of course, your hat’s too small.” 

“ Perhaps that is because my hair is too thick,” I sug- 
gested, with an attempt at sarcasm. 

“ Yes, ’tis, get a haircut,” said Maud, who did not per- 
ceive the irony ; “ but even then it’s sizes too small. Boots, 
too; you don’t want a point to them, if you aren’t going 


70 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


to pick your teeth with them, and you’re just bursting out 
of your gloves.” 

” So are you,” I said, for the criticism was galling. 

“ Now you’re being nasty. Well, do what you like. I 
don’t mind if you look like a picture postcard. You’re 
one of the toffs, one of the kid-gloved Dandy Fifth, I don’t 
think.” 

She turned her back on me, began to gaze intently into 
a window full of bead necklaces. I was still angry, but 
her irritation killed mine, and I could see under the cluster 
of her brown curls a gleam of white neck which moved 
me to repentance. I took her by the elbow and made her 
turn towards me. She smiled a little. 

” Now you’re sorry, aren’t you? Leave go of my arm 
and say so.” 

I apologised, and being humbled was forgiven. But I 
was also subjugated, the outfit was taken out of my 
hands. 

“ He wants a couple of blue ties,” she explained to the 
shopman. 

” Excuse me,” I said, ” as I am dark ” 

“ That’s all right. You put him up those two in 
poplin. . . . Oh, no, don’t trouble, he’s a Frenchman, he 
doesn’t know. And now you just run along to the linen 
department, tea-caddy.” 

Tea-caddy! I, Cadoresse, for her “caddy” and then 
“ tea-caddy.” 

“You know what I told you: just as tight round the 
neck as you can stick it, and cuffs sewn on, and five and 
six’s the price, with a bob off for six. You can get half-a- 
dozen coloured ones while you’re about it, and mind you 
don’t get mauve, ’cos it washes out third time.” 

“ I don’t like coloured shirts,” I said. 

“ Well, you’ve got to like ’em. I’m not going about with 
a blooming mute.” 

This was Maud in her element, enjoying the new and 
amusing sensation of dressing a young man. The occu- 


MISS MAUD HOOPER 


71 


pation did not show her up at her worst, for she had 
somehow learned how a man should dress; at least she 
had the instinct which, left to itself, makes for flashiness, 
but, when educated, ends in correctness. She had, for 
men, the sharp ideas of fashion which she derived from 
the rapt contemplation of popular actors; they influenced 
her enormously. She could not have said whether trousers 
should be pegtop, whether collars should be double or 
wing, but she responded to influence so well that she 
spontaneously rejected the thing that was not the thing 
of the day: when it became the thing of the day she as 
spontaneously suggested that I should adopt it. The tri- 
umph of clothes was attained when she could say of a 
passing man: “ This is It.” 

I was difficult to fit at the hatter’s. 

“No wonder. I often think, you’re barmy on the 
crumpet,” Maud commented, who had then known me for 
a week. “ S’pose they were clearing a job line the day you 
got your head. Still, you aren’t worse than pa, with 
the bald bit at the back under the brim.” 

I found her good company, this cheerful, energetic girl; 
she was less managing than adventurous; amused by the 
“ spree,” she threw all her energy into an occupation which 
she would have voted a nuisance if it had been habitual. 
She was so pleased because she was doing something new 
that she did not reprove me when I squeezed her hand 
behind the liftman’s back. She even pouted at me the 
imitation of a kiss. While charming, she remained com- 
petent, or rather voracious; she was bent on extracting 
rebates for quantities; she asked for shop-soiled goods, as 
if she were a thrifty French housewife. But thrift 
was not the motive; she displayed the street-arab acute- 
ness of those who systematically make a show on small 
means. 

At last I was equipped. I had been in four shops, and 
an undoubtedly English wardrobe was travelling towards 
my room. I suggested lunch. 


72 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


What’ll ma say? ” said Maud^ doubtfully. Then: “ who 
cares? We’ll say we waited while they wondered what 
it was ’d blown in. An’ if she doesn’t like it she can 
lump it.” 

“ Lump it? ” 

“ Do the other thing.” 

I accepted the unintelligible explanation^ and we looked 
for a place to lunch at. It was past one o’clock. The 
pale, silvery light of November made the grey pavement 
faintly opalescent where patches of nocturnal moisture 
lingered; the sun was not shining, but I could feel that 
it was shining behind the colourless haze, and though I 
wondered for a moment whether, in Bordeaux, it was 
streaming on the red and purple leaves of the beeches, 
I did not feel homesick. For was this not pulsating, 
vigorous England; jolly, warm England? A green Atlas 
came towards us, its team gaily trotting ; the omnibus 
rolled as it went, like a big, fat forester, or some enormous 
bloated scarab. Busy, sturdy England, and pretty, white- 
necked English girl, I . . . 

“ Penny,” said Maud as usual. 

“ I was thinking of restaurants ” I lied, having learned 
her language. 

“Oh, we don’t want a ristorang; too nobby; you come 
along.” 

Maud led me to one of those shops where people have 
tea at one o’clock and fried eggs at four. Four or five 
companies maintain many hundreds of them, and I re- 
member that it struck me as splendid that there should 
be hundreds of these shops; it was a large idea, it con- 
veyed a notion of national appetite; and the uniformity 
of the arrangement, the levelling of Bond Street and Chis- 
wick, held a suggestion of democracy. The more uniform 
things are, the more they are part of a civilisation. 

“ You better have a Kate and Sidney,” said Maud; “ it’s 
English, quite English, you know. Hi ! Miss.” 

The black-clad, slim Miss responded sulkily to the shrill 


MISS MAUD HOOPER 


7S 


cry, smiled when I looked at her. English girls still smile 
when I look at them, even when I hardly notice them; my 
eye has habits. 

“ You needn’t keep a glowing orb on her,” said Maud, 
as the girl left, charged to bring us a “ steak and kidney 
pudding, with boiled, and half a veal an’ ham pie, and 
two coffees.” “ I didn’t bring you here to make goo-goo 
eyes . . . codfish.” 

Oh ! but she was so pretty, Maud,” I said, innocently. 
“ All the English girls are pretty. She had hair like the 
sunshine — not like yours, of course; that is like the nuts 
in September.” 

“ Been kissing the Blarney Stone, Frenchy. But you 
don’t come it over me like that, even if I haven’t got hair 
like the moonshine or whatever you call it. Pretty! It’s 
a lot you know about it; why, she’s just a job lot of broom- 
sticks. And you should give up that habit, looking at 
girls with that ‘ take me away and bury me near mother ’ 
look of yours.” 

“ Look at that one with the green eyes and red hair,” 
I said, mischievously. 

“ Carrots ! ” 

** And those two, the dark ones. They can’t be Eng- 
lish ” 

‘‘ S’pose I’m not English,” Maud snapped. She was 
angry, provoked by my open admiration for the others. 
She leaned her elbows on the table, propped her face 
upon her hands; two dimples appeared in the rosy cheeks. 
I bent across the table. 

“ You’re the Rose of England,” I said; “ not the Rose of 
England I thought I would find, you know, the White 
Rose. You’re the beautiful, warm red rose, and your eyes 
are like brown crystals, your hair is like mahogany, and 
it shines like it, and your mouth is like red velvet round 
two rows of pearls.” 

“My!” said Maud, smiling; “you can tell the tale, 
Caddy. Where did you learn English ? ” 


74 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I’ve always been learning English, I knew we should 
meet.” 

“ Tell me another.” 

“ I really did.” 

“ Don’t say ‘ I really did,’ you dummy, say ‘ honest.’ 
I tell you what, Caddy, you talk too well, you give your- 
self away.” 

It was true; it was the grammatical excellence of my 
speech exposed my foreignness: it has cost me years of 
patient labour to learn to speak as badly as the English. 

I began to eat my first steak and kidney pudding: I 
do not think I have ever tasted anything so delicious as 
that first pudding; I remember the tender consistency of 
the suet, the solid quality of the gravy, and the thrill 
when the palate that expected steak suddenly discovered 
kidney. And I suppose that, after the oil of my fathers, 
I liked the sensation of potatoes flavoured with nothing 
but warm water. While Maud daintily pecked at the 
veal and ham pie, nibbling like a bird, she talked inces- 
santly, just then of her people. 

“ Oh, pa,” she said in response to a question; “ the dad’s 
all right. He’s a dignified old cock, but you mustn’t mind 
him, even if he will go on about his talky-talkies. You 
just tell him a little bit out of Answers once a week and 
he’ll be happy like the larks in May.” 

“ What does he do? ” 

“He’s in the City, like you; the same sort of job; 
that’s how he got hold of you from a fellow in Barbezan. 
We’ve been wanting a lodger. Oh, but don’t let mother 
catch you saying that: you’re a paying guest, you know; 
ma’s so genteel ” 

Maud began to laugh, and I laughed too when she ex- 
plained the distinction. I liked this brusque, laughing 
girl, for I saw she had no snobbery; at least she never 
showed signs of it except when she met the “ skivvy ” 
in the hall on best hat days. Then Maud was “ quite the 
lady.” 


MISS MAUD HOOPER 


75 


“ They’re all right,” she summed up, “ but they’re a 
bit full of themselves. Lor’, you wouldn’t believe the 
row there was when I said I’d go to the ’Cademy last 
spring. It wasn’t genteel. I’m going to be an actress, 
you know.” 

“ Is there a conservatory here? ” I asked, translating 
at random. 

“ I don’t know what you mean by a conservatory. I 
go to Madame Tinman’s — Mother Tinman they call her 
in the profesh! Youve heard of her. What! not heard 
of Mother Tinman? What did they teach you in Border? 
Anyhow, I go there four times a week. Singing and 
dancing’s my line; singing’s what I like: 

“ Oh, mother dear, sing me to sleep 
And beg the angels my soul keep . . 

she hummed. “What d’you say to stewed fruit next?” 

While we ate the stewed fruit she expatiated on her 
work at Mother Tinman’s, and I wondered at her small 
appetite, for she had left half her pie; few French girls 
would have done that. She seemed enthusiastic, and I 
dimly realised that to this peculiar education of hers was 
due the difference which existed between her and her 
parents, and stodgy Lulu. Taken at sixteen from the rigid 
gentility of Mrs. Hooper’s home, from the limitations of 
a budget of some two hundred and fifty a year, she had 
been plunged into the artificial atmosphere of the outer 
stage. At Mother Tinman’s, I found out by degrees, 
singing lessons were given by professionals who were 
resting, and while voice production of a kind was taught 
to the voiceless as well as to the gifted, the pupils were 
well fitted to earn money. 

“ You should hear old Bella Billion,” said Maud: 
“ ‘ Never you mind if you can’t go up to D,’ she says, 
‘you just keep your eye on the man in the stage box. 
One wink for him and a nice goo-goo for the gallery boy. 
Twirl your sunshade, twirl away, tooraloo, and never 


76 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


you mind the words so long as you’ve the limelight on 
your pearlies; the chorus’s the thing, my gal; you sing it 
to the gallery boy until he shouts it back at you. And 
let him know you’ve got a knee and frillies that weren’t 
washed in printer’s ink. Up and down, me dear, an’ 
round an’ round, goo-goo, tooraloo, that’s how you do 
the trick, my gal.’ Lor’, it’s enough to give you a fit on 
the mat.” 

I don’t think that for many months I understood Maud 
and the jolly looseness of her talk, but there is no for- 
getting that extraordinary language of hers; its vocabulary 
is not very large. Bella Billion and her like, the talk of 
cars and of trips to Maidenhead, of salaries of a hundred 
a week and the indiscretions of peers, all this had created 
in Maud’s pretty head an amazing confusion. Gentility, 
propriety, all the English starch had already been taken 
out of her by coarse English irresponsibility. But, and 
this was amazing, personal aloofness remained. I laid my 
hand upon hers, pressed the pointed fingers. 

“ Give over,” she said as she snatched her hand away. 

Why did we go so freely? I wondered. Matchmaking? 
no doubt, since marriage leads to love, they say, more 
surely than love to marriage. And English liberty too. 
English liberty, how difficult it was to understand you 
were not licence. 


CHAPTER V 


BARBEZAN & CO. 

I 

The old firm received me well enough. The office was 
large and rich; it occupied a whole floor in a new Fen- 
church Street skyscraper, and conveyed an impression of 
well-oiled machinery. Letters were numbered and sorted 
by the office boy into baskets, one of which was known as 
the basket because it stood on Mr. Lawton’s desk; after 
Mr. Lawton had dealt with them they were distributed by 
Mr. Hugh, mechanically acknowledged in polite, stiff letters 
which began by “ Sir ” and ended in “ yours obediently.” I 
never heard of one unacknowledged letter. They passed 
into obscurer baskets, were collected by a junior clerk, 
who checked their numbers, traced any that Mr. Lawton 
had held up in defiance of his own rules. At last they went 
to the card-index, an innovation which rather clashed with 
our formality, to the files. We never lost a letter, forgot 
one entry. We were never short of brown paper and 
string. 

The extraordinary part of it was that this caused no 
fuss. How things got done in that noiseless, swift way, 
between ten and five, I can explain only by saying that 
we never talked about work. We talked of other things, 
and accordingly these grew confused, but work was done in 
silence and seemed to demand no conferences. I believe 
silence is England’s secret, and I bore many a snub before 
I acquired the habit. I had not been in Barbezan a week 
before I began to learn that I, the foreign correspondent, 
must do my own jobs. 

“ What is the address ? ” I asked Mr. Hugh Lawton, 

77 


78 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


who had handed me a slip bearing, with the notes for a 
letter, the name ‘ Marillot.’ “And the whole name?” 

“ You must look it up.” 

“ Yes — but do those ships dock at Pauillac? ” 

“ I cannot tell you.” 

I was minded to ask whether the tons referred to were 
“ short ” or “ long,” but refrained, for Mr. Hugh had 
already turned away and, in his cold, precise voice, was 
telling Purkis he would need supplementary bills of lading 
for the Florahel shipment. I realised, as I watched the 
smooth back of his head, that I had been thrown into the 
water, that nobody wanted to know whether I could swim, 
that I would have to find all this out. I might drown — 
but then, if I struggled I would not drown; such is the 
English way of teaching people to swim. 

Magic English business, when I think of you to-day, 
I have my boyish impression of England as wealth; your 
wheels revolve silent and steady, grinding out gold, without 
waste of material or time; you pass from father to son, 
you endure for ever, and you are a concern so sacred that 
you must be shielded from the prying eyes of woman. 
There are three kinds of Englishmen who entrust no secrets 
to their wives: Cabinet Ministers, Freemasons and business 
men, and as the latter are more numerous than the other 
two classes they set the tone for their race. The English 
business man is most interesting when confronted with a 
new appliance or a new idea; he sniffs it like a dog who 
is offered a piece, let us say, of wild boar, or some other 
outlandish food; he feels it is good, but novel; it must be 
looked at, smelled, pawed, tossed in the air to see whether 
it falls properly dead and harmless. At last it may be 
nibbled, then greedily eaten. Then the two, dog and 
Englishman, sit up, and declare each in his own way that 
he has hungered for this for years, that he has made 
special efforts to procure it and that he is not in the least 
afraid of novelty. 

That was how Purkis received the calculator. Purkis, 


BARBEZAN & CO. 


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when I first knew him, was elderly : I met him in Moorgate 
Street last week and he is as elderly as ever, but not a day 
older though ten years have elapsed. On the calculator 
occasion he appeared to me as a short man, with a square 
face and sparse brown hair in which ran some silver streaks. 
Small and very delicate hands contrasted with his bulky 
body, especially in his familiar attitude, when he leaned 
his shoulders against the mantelpiece and crossed his hands 
upon his rather aggressive paunch. Purkis looked so 
broad, then, that I had to think of a frog. 

That was the attitude he adopted when a new idea 
arrived in Fenchurch Street. Purkis would examine it 
with suspicious grey eyes, clench his little hands upon his 
large stomach and say: 

“ What are we coming to next.^ ” or “ I don’t know 
anything about it.” 

The first formula meant that Purkis was willing to 
tolerate the intruder; the second that he didn’t want to 
know anything about it. Remove the bauble. Purkis had 
said “ I don’t know anything about it ” to the German 
canvasser who now stood in front of him, amiably blinking 
behind his gold-rimmed glasses and quite unaware that 
Purkis had pronounced sentence, that all he had to do was 
to take the calculator out and hang it. 

“ Ver’ goot thing,” he remarked, genially. “ It will do 
all calculations.” 

The German turned from the impassive Purkis to me, 
in whom he divined interest: “ You say figures. I 
multiply.” 

I made up a terrific sum, a multiplication of five or six 
figures by five or six more, behind which trailed treacherous 
decimals, the sort of multiplication I hope never to have to 
effect. The German threw me a gratified glance: “Ver’ 
simple, ver’ simple,” he muttered, as he deftly seized lever 
after lever, pulled each one down to the indicator figure 
while my fantastic multiplicand appeared in the upper 
frame. He smiled at the machine from under his yellow 


80 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


moustache, seized the lever; half a dozen rasping sounds, 
cliek, more rasps, another click, rasp, rasp, rasp. The 
German drew back, pointed triumphantly at the machine; 
he evidently looked upon the product as a work of art. 

“ So ! ” he said, triumphantly. 

“ How do you know it’s right ” asked the calm voice 
of Mr. Hugh, who had come in. 

The German drew himself up, as if tempted to hand the 
questioner a card and a cartel, then decided to clear the 
machine’s reputation. 

“ I prove it now,” he said. He looked at Purkis 
defiantly, solemnly handed me a slip on which he had 
written the multiplicand. A quick shift of the levers, the 
product became a dividend, the multiplier a divisor; the 
lever was rotated towards the operator and, preceded by 
a tornado of clicks, the quotient suddenly showed the 
figures of the written multiplicand. It was exactly like 
a conjuring trick. 

“ Ver’ simple,” he declared, as a cherubic smile illumined 
his rosy face. 

“ That’s rather ingenious,” said Mr. Hugh, and began 
to finger the levers. “ It might be handy for those long 
statements of gross weights. What do you think, Purkis? ” 

“ I don’t know anything about it. Sir.” 

Oh, I egsplain — ” the German protested. 

“ No, I understand. How mueh does it cost? ” 

“ Twenty-six pounds ” 

“ All right. Send in the bill.” 

While the German wreaked his vengeance on Purkis 
by explaining to him everything that might be done with 
a calculator, I was able to meditate on the swollen rash- 
ness of these business methods. Twenty-six pounds ! 
The English must be very rich, but — I found this out later, 
they do not like small expenses ; if the German had 
wanted twenty-six shillings he would have had no order; 
there would have been nothing impressive in his new 
idea. 


BARBEZAN & CO. 


81 


“ I don’t know anything about it,” said Purkis ungrate- 
fully, as the German left the office. He did not; I am 
sure that he does not yet know anything about it, and he 
never will; he will do the gross weights statements himself 
with a pencil, but he will not touch the calculator; no 
junior has ever used it in his presence without being told 
to take the damned thing into the waiting-room. The 
calculator may grow old and decayed; it may even get out 
of order and thus become thoroughly respectable, but 
Purkis will never recognise it: in his own phrase, “that 
would never do.” 

Certainly Hugh Lawton was of a different type. He 
had recently come down from Oxford (in those days I 
said “ up ”) with a pass degree and, though he has never 
told me so, I now know from a chance reference to “ no- 
tions ” that he had been through Winchester. Hugh Law- 
ton was then twenty-three or four, and so very much of 
a young Roman that some uninformed girls called him 
“ The Greek God.” Six feet tall, broad-shouldered, slim- 
hipped, with a high, white forehead, calm, blue eyes, a 
nose on the bridge of which there was but little thickness 
of skin, he attracted attention even in this England, whose 
sons are the sons of Apollo; he had a long, thin-lipped 
mouth, a resolute chin; his large white hands were always 
in good condition, though never manicured. Upon his 
loose limbs clothes hung so easily that I was reminded 
again of a Roman statue whose toga and limbs are hewn 
of one piece. Indeed, it was pathetic to see him stand 
next to Purkis: there was such sharp contrast between 
their trouser knees. 

I do not want to dwell upon Hugh Lawton’s clothes, 
though they were a bitterness to me in those early days; 
he had his father’s recipe for white collars, and his ties, 
always faint in shade, must have been specially made for 
him, as I never managed to match them. But his clothes 
were significant because they expressed him, very much, 
I suppose, as mine revealed my own individuality. It is 


82 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


not enough to say that Hugh never appeared with a red 
tie or a purple shirt: it was impossible for him to do so; 
it could not have occurred to him to buy such things. The 
things he did buy were so neutral that they were, in a 
sense, a negation rather than an assertion of attire; like 
most Englishmen of his class he was dressed, while I was 
got up. He could do nothing so positive as get himself up. 
I have never yet seen signs of his doing anything positive. 

The strength of Hugh Lawton lay in his abstentions. 
He did not speak much, he did not gossip, he did not 
plead or urge; twice only in his intercourse with me did 
he lay down views, and they turned out to be those of 
his class. But if he did not obtrude himself he did not 
draw back; he stood, as his nation has stood in every part 
of the world until the world, tired of wondering whether 
it would go away, let it stay. In the more familiar at- 
mosphere of his father’s house he laid down views from 
time to time, and this does not go counter to what I have 
said of his silence and the two breaks that took place in 
it: the dinner-table and drawing-room remarks were hardly 
views, they were statements, and ea; parte statements only 
in so far as they were repetitions of equally motiveless 
statements taken from his newspaper. Though a Liberal 
he was no Liberal partisan: he was a Liberal because his 
father supported the Liberals, a Liberal by right of birth. 

How Hugh Lawton came to tolerate Liberalism I do 
not yet know, unless he tolerated it because he accepted 
conditions as they were. His indifference was foreign to 
the restless spirit of rank-and-file Liberalism; I never felt 
that he approved of the Liberal creed, but I am quite sure 
that he did not disapprove of it; certainly he had not 
attained acceptance of his party’s theories by dint of 
scepticism. Certainly! I do not know that I dare say 
“ certainly,” for Hugh Lawton must have had a secret 
life; he must have had, because I never found that he had 
a public one; I never knew him to express his admiration 
for a movement not comprised within the party creed; h^ 


BARBEZAN & CO. 


83 


had many friends but I do not know whether he cared for 
them; I have never been quite sure that he fell in love, 
though he paid moderate and impartial attentions to many 
friends of his sisters. He cannot have been so neutral; 
some mental modesty must have concealed — what.^ And 
when I speculate on this problem I am carried away by my 
prejudices; I think of another Hugh Lawton, out for ad- 
venture in the shining armour of idealism, and of yet 
another, with flushed face and glowing eyes, intent upon 
the pursuit of some base passion. What did he do? Se- 
cretly drink? Smoke opium or gamble near Tottenham 
Court Road? Pursue some strange loves? I don’t know. 
I shall never know; it is impossible that there was nothing 
behind that rigid face — no desire, no hope, no lust. But 
how is one to find out? 

His tastes were not evidence, for they were not definite. 
He saw, I believe, most plays as they came out, one night 
the latest “ Girl,” the other some gloomy importation from 
Sweden; if a play was produced at, say, the Haymarket, 
he went; if it was produced at the Court he did not. It 
did not matter what the play was, it mattered what the 
theatre was, who the players were. I think he read a few 
books, not many, but the contrasts were amazing; he shrank 
neither from the Life of Gladstone nor from paper-backed 
novels which were finally stolen and enjoyed by the house- 
maid. He liked games: that is, he played them, but he 
displayed no enthusiasm. He neither ate much nor drank 
much, nor smoked much, but he did not openly disapprove 
of teetotallers and non-smokers. Infrequently he swore, 
but without conviction. I believe he did not swear because 
he was irritated, but because most men swore. 

The mystery of Hugh Lawton is the mystery of England, 
and it is insoluble; no steps are taken to guard it, but 
I suspect it is guarded by the immense inarticulateness 
of the English. They do not feel the need to explain 
themselves; if others explain them they do not protest. 
Perhaps they do not understand, and perhaps they do 


84 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


not care. But in those days I felt this English mystery 
as a reserve of power; I knew that Hugh Lawton would 
never give himself away, never lay himself open to attack; 
he was the tortoise, typical of his race, able to bear all 
blows on its shell and resolved on one thing only: that it 
would never, never, never put out its head. 

I admired, and I still admire Hugh Lawton. I admire 
him impersonally as a statue, an opera or a principle, a 
thing the appeal of which is inherent in itself and not 
dependent on clamorous expression. Though I do not com- 
pletely understand him, I feel him to be fixed. He is 
permanent, he is like the Oxford turf, mown, watered, and 
rolled for three hundred years; a western civilisation has 
made of him a finished product, and it may be that his exist- 
ence is a presage of defeat; breeding eannot go higher, 
but it can go lower. Too much he towers over the under- 
man, and too unconscious is he to be the overman; he is 
the finest product of the average of his race, the apogee 
of the commonplace, and with him England stands in 
apotheosis. 


II 

Hugh Lawton stood as a banner, dignifying Barbezan 
& Co. ; his commercial training was less than mine, but 
he had commonsense: that is to say he was so afraid of 
committing himself that he was never likely to do the wrong 
thing: whether he was likely to do the right one was open 
to question. He was, at that time, head of the tranship- 
ment office, where I suspect Barker did the work, with little 
Merton, the junior, while I took over the correspondence 
in French and German under the kindly rule of old Purkis. 
(They called him old Purkis when he entered the offiee at 
the age of twenty- five.) Old Purkis, who loved only one 
thing in the world, his gai^den at Penge (he really did 
live at Penge though he called it Sydenham), had made 
a close friend of Farr, his second, because he too loved. 


BARBEZAN & CO. 


85 


in order, his garden at Hornsey, then his son Norman, 
then his wife, who was the most wonderful woman in the 
world. Farr was about thirty; he had a round, white face 
with two black currants stuck in for eyes, and the snubbest 
nose in the world. I think I disliked him at first sight 
because black hairs grew perpendicularly from his wide 
nostrils. Then Farr saw me make a fool of myself, and 
that I found hard to forgive, as hard as it had been to 
forgive Chaverac, the witness of my cowardice. 

After I had been a month in the office Farr saw me, 
one afternoon, putting on my hat. I forget where I was 
going to. He called me back. “ Oh, Cadoresse,” he said 
with hesitation, “ as you’re going out, do you mind paying 
this cheque in.^ It’s five to four and the sergeant’s out, 
while Lord knows where Tyler is. You don’t mind, do 
you.?” 

I hesitated, for it did not seem to me right that the 
foreign correspondent should do commissionaire’s work. 
One must preserve one’s dignity. Still, I took the cheque 
without a word and went out with an air of erectness 
intended to convey th4t I was condescending. When I 
reached the bank I looked at the cheque, a large one, 
for over two thousand pounds and, though I knew that a 
cheque already endorsed and crossed with the name of 
the bank was of no use to me, it pleased me to be handling 
even the dummy of so large a sum. I pushed the cheque 
and paying-in book under the cashier’s little railing; he 
glanced at the cheque, turned it over, made a tick on the 
foil as he tore out the slip, and pushed the book back 
with a mumbled “ all right.” 

I waited. A liveried commissionaire gently pushed me 
to show that he had his business to do. At last the cashier 
looked up. 

“ Yes.? ” he said. 

“ I am waiting for a receipt.” 

Receipt? ” He had blue eyes, and they bulged under 
his raised white eyebrows. 


86 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ Yes, a receipt for this cheque.” I showed the paying-in 
book. 

“ We don’t give receipts.” 

“ But ” I faltered. 

“ ’Urry up,” the commissionaire remarked. 

“ Banks don’t give receipts,” said the old man sulkily. 
“ Here.” He held out his hand for the book the com- 
missionaire was putting through the bars. The push became 
harder. I found myself being edged along the counter. 
I remember protesting again, being pushed still further 
away, for two clerks had hurried in as four was about to 
strike. 

I left the bank more dismayed than angry, for I had 
not seen the commissionaire leave, with or without a re- 
ceipt ; besides, nothing showed that he had paid in cheques ; 
while I did my own short business I remember the oppres- 
sion of the affair; I wondered whether this were serious, 
what Barbezan & Co. would say; at any rate I could swear 
I had paid the cheque in. I rehearsed my speech, to be 
delivered in the witness-box; it was a fine, manly speech; 
I squared my shoulders as I delivered it. When I re- 
turned to the office my heart was beating, and I laid the 
book in front of Farr, pale but determined. 

“ They did not give me a receipt,” I faltered. 

“A receipt.^ What do you want a receipt for?” 

“ Is it not right we should have a receipt? ” 

“What do you want a receipt for? ” 

The stupid repetition angered me. I hated the white 
face and the rigid black hair. 

“We fill up a form in France and we always have a 
receipt,” I said, obstinately. 

“ Well, we aren’t in France.” 

“ It’s a curious way to do business,” I persevered. 

“ Oh, don’t be a silly fool.” 

In the moment of silence that followed I felt my cheeks 
grow very hot. He had insulted me ! And in that moment 
the whole of the scene on the hill, so many years ago. 


BARBEZAN & CO. 


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unrolled on the film that obscured my eyes. Never again! 
At least this time I would be no coward. While, with 
extreme dignity, I took out my card case, I had a vision 
of this low fellow neatly spitted on my sword. The 
point, I felt certain, would stick out between his shoulder 
blades. 

“Lord!” he gasped as he took up my card; “what’s 
this.?” 

“ You have insulted me. You will receive my seconds 
to-morrow.” 

Farr’s currant-like eyes became larger than I had ever 
seen them before; his open mouth showed irregular pointed 
teeth. Suddenly he threw himself back in his chair, and 
roar after roar of laughter came from him, while I looked 
at him severely, my right hand on my hip. Barker, who 
was at that time consulting a reference book on the corner 
table, looked up. 

“ What’s the joke.? ” he asked. 

Young Tyler came up to us, as if by accident, and framed 
in the door I saw Merton. 

“ He — Cadoresse ” Farr gasped, pointing a stubby, 

white finger at me. Then he collapsed again, waving my 
card. 

A group formed about us. 

“ Take his collar off,” said Barker. 

“ Give the gentleman air,” Merton suggested. 

“No, no,” Farr wheezed; then he recovered. “Cador- 
esse has challenged me. I’m in for a bloomin’ duel.” 

Then they all laughed, and I could hardly understand 
them, for they talked all together, and Purkis, who came 
in to ask what the noise was about, exploded into feeble 
titters. 

“ At your disposal, Mr. Shivaleer,” said Farr, bowing, 
with his hands on his chest; “but I choose the weapons. 
What do you say to safety pins ? ” 

“ A gentleman fights with the weapons of gentlemen,” 
I said, but I was no longer secure in my dignity. 


88 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I was overwhelmed with pleasantries; Barker suggested 
squirts; Merton asked whether we would all go to B’long 
for the week-end and would I show them the sights after 
honour had been satisfied. Even Tyler, my despised 
junior, ventured to ask whether breastplates were barred. 

I turned away, I twirled my little black moustache as 
I went to my desk. I ought to have known better than 
mix myself up in a brawl with my inferiors. 

“ I don’t know anything about it,” Purkis summed up 
as he left the room. 

Of course not. His sort didn’t. 

Ill 

I suppose I was a silly young man. Perhaps I was 
morbidly sensitive rather than silly; I resented anything 
that displeased me in England, less because it displeased 
me than because I could not bear to think there was any- 
thing displeasing in England. The duel represented one 
of the gaps in my knowledge of the English; I had not 
read enough modern literature to understand that Walter 
Scott was properly dead. I found myself famous in the 
office ; the word “ shivaleer ” clove to me, or I was called 
“ the Knight,” and “ Cyrano,” for Coquelin had recently 
come to London. I was subjected to chaff, the chaff I 
have found so difficult to grow accustomed to; I had to get 
used to being asked how many frogs I had had for break- 
fast, to be hailed with “ Hullo, socialism,” if I wore my 
favourite red tie, to be told not to go for my landlady 
with a fork if the peas were hard. 

Chaff! Amazing island in English reserve! right to 
jovial and reciprocal insult! Englishmen could not tolerate 
that which they do if they were not phlegmatic, lymphatic. 
I have not yet found out why an Englishman who will not 
venture to ask you how much yo-u earn a year will address 
you as “ goldbug ” if you buy a sixpenny paper. We 
Frenchmen don’t chaff: we dare not; if we did, we should 


BARBEZAN & CO. 


89 


be fighting all day. I do not like chaff now — it makes 
me a little uncomfortable, I am never quite sure that I 
know the ring of it; but I have accepted it as I have 
accepted that the duel is dead. It is enough for me that 
the English should chaff and that their differences should 
be settled by fist or writ: they can do no wrong. So 
determined was I already in this attitude that I apologised 
to the detested Farr, but my reputation did not decrease; 
it spread over the rest of the office and entertained it for 
weeks. It even reached Hugh Lawton, who suddenly 
added to the end of a letter he dictated to me: 

“ I heard about your duel, Cadoresse. It’s not done, it 
really isn’t done.” 

Well, if it wasn’t done I wouldn’t do it. I might not, 
in Rome, do as the Romans did, but in London I would 
certainly do as the English did. Was I not going to be 
an Englishman.^ a real, beef-eating, beer-drinking, sport- 
ing Englishman? A fury of Anglicisation came over me. 
I watched Barker furtively as he worked, for he was very 
well dressed, and as I was still far too proud to ask for 
the address of his tailor, I covertly examined his coat when 
he went out to wash. The result was not quite a success, 
for I chose an aggressive Donegal tweed, and, as I felt my 
clothes were too tight, had it made several sizes too large. 
It fitted me as a sack does a potato. I was nicknamed the 
teddy-bear. Then I had my hair cut very short. 

” ’Elio, Dartmoor,” said Maud, playfully, when I came 
home. I realised that I talked too much: I became 
wooden. I even thought of shaving off my little black 
moustache, but Maud would not hear of it. I was going 
to be English, one of these splendid calm people, whose 
temper was so easy that insult could rebound from them; 
I was going to be silent, self-reliant, purposeful, in brief 
Olympian. And I was going to speak English like an 
Englishman. 

In those days I overdid it, for I was not content with 
continually noting idioms, looking up new words and gram- 


90 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


matical rules: I wanted to obliterate from English the 
intruding Latin_, I was as enthusiastic as the German who 
substituted “ Fernsprecher ” for “ telephone.” You will 
picture me^ then, at six o’clock, in a deserted office and 
quite unmindful of Maud; I have a French dictionary 
and an etymological dictionary and I translate from a 
newspaper : 

“ Our constitution, derived from the customs of 
ancient England, is a monument which no Cabinet 
will venture to destroy — ” 

Latin ! good enough for the English, but not for a would-be 
Englishman. I remember my patriotic translation: 

“ Our laws, which have come down to us from our 
fathers, are a tower that no henchman of the King 
will dare to cast down — ” 

The word “ tower ” was a great trouble to me ; “ hench- 
men of the King ” was, I felt, a subterfuge made necessary 
by the non-delegation of the powers of the moot; yet 
it could pass, while tower could not. But there seemed 
to be no Anglo-Saxon idea of monument, and the Eliza- 
bethans were so woefully foreign. The Elizabethans were 
not good enough for me, and I had not yet discovered 
Miles Coverdale. 

My enthusiasm was damped by another of those little 
incidents which make up the history of my first months 
with Barbezan. 

I had come to London well primed with commercial 
phrases, my tongue glib with “ yours to hand of the 8th 
inst.,” and “ as per contra,” and the other barbarisms, 
but I began to rebel. I did not like these sentences, which 
could be translated almost word for word into any one 
of the atrocities the world chooses to call business forms. 
I decided to redeem the unliterary City, and I decided to 
be original. 


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It is digressing to tell what I suffered because I was not 
allowed to be original or distinguished, but I digress as 
does a sheep in a new and succulent pasturage, where it 
leaps towards a tender shoot before it has munched the 
one it has just bitten off; they are too rich, those English 
fields. I suffered from obscurity because I had never 
known it before ; as a child I had recited fables to admiring 
elders; as a boy I had stacked my prizes in the drawing- 
room and exacted tribute whenever the graveyard was 
opened ; and then it had been youth, more academic success, 
modish clothes, minor prowess in athletics. I do not think 
I had ever hit a tennis ball over the net without looking 
to see whether the performance was observed. In England, 
as Hugh Lawton said, this was not done. And though 
the avarice of this country when praise is asked of it, 
galled me, I accepted it as a harsh but beneficent tonic: 
was it not the custom of this northern Rome to give no 
credit, to recognise naught save duty done.^ 

But I had to swallow my tonic, and it was nasty. If 
the draught contained in the duel was unpleasant, others, 
as bad and worse, had to be swallowed too. The famous 
Saxon business letter was one of those. I have forgotten 
the bulk of it, but I believe that in my enthusiasm I 
began by telling our correspondent, who had asked for 
a rebate on Barbezan’s commission, that “ We begged to 
acknowledge his writing of the fourth of last month ” ; I 
then went on to “ We must say, in answer, that we cannot 
grant that our share in the yield of the business is over 
great — ” I assured him at the end, having been instructed 
to say that our “ charges were so inadequate as barely to 
balance our working expenses,” that “ our share was so 
small as to be less than our need.” 

I was called into Mr. Lawton’s private room. He sat 
at a large knee-hole desk — a handsome man, then close 
on fifty and very like Hugh. In front of him was my 
remarkable screed. 


92 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Qu*est-ce que c^est que cela, Cadoresse?” he asked, 
taking it up. 

“ That is the letter to Burland & Co./’ I said. 

“Yes,” he said after a pause; “that’s all very well. 
But why ‘ our share in the yield of the business is not over 
great } ’ Why not ‘ the commission is in accordance with 
current practice ’ ? ” 

This did not sound like a very good phrase, even in City 
Latin English. But I ignored that, fell back on my main 
defence : 

“ Mine,” I said, carefully choosing my words, “ is written 
in Saxon, in Gothic alone.” 

“ In Gothic alone,” gasped Mr. Lawton. Then he began 
to laugh, while I stood in front of the desk, very mortified 
and rather angry. “ But what do you want to write Gothic 
for? You’ll be making up charter-parties in black-letter 
by and by.” 

“ Gothic, or Saxon,” I said, and paused reverently, “ is 
a wonderful tongue, Mr. Lawton, it is so full of meaning, 
so concise ” 

“ Concise,” said Mr. Lawton, wickedly, “ is not Saxon. 
You are falling from grace.” 

But I was too excited to feel his shaft. I wanted to tell 
him how much I loved the word “ craft ” and hated “ art,” 
how inferior “ remarkable ” was to “ wonderful ” ; I was 
making a bad case, I was carried away by analogy; in my 
mistaken philological zeal I branded as Low Latin honest 
Frankish words which had strayed into French. I but- 
tressed my view with Shakespeare, the Bible and Fletcher 
(whom I had never read) ; I stuttered in vain efforts readily 
to find Saxon equivalents of “ psychology ” and “ retro- 
grade.” I tried to make him feel my craving to be English, 
historically English. 

He listened up to the end, without interrupting me, 
holding his chin in his left hand. Then he looked up at 
bie with amusement in his eyes. 

“So you’re going to be the John Bright of Fenchurch 


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Street? I’m sorry for you, Cadoresse, you’ll have a rotten 
time. But, really, are you only a silly ass or are you 
pulling my leg? What are you doing? ” 

I blushed and confessed that I had noted the idiom in 
my pocket-book, for inquiry. 

“ Well, you’re trying, anyhow,” he said, laughing again. 
“ But you’d better not go too far. I’m afraid you’re plus 
anglais que les Anglais, Cadoresse.” 

The letter was rewritten. But, a week later, I received 
an invitation to dine at Lancaster Gate, of which I shall 
have something to say; that was a very good ending to 
the affair; at least it seemed good until Muriel Lawton 
quietly asked me whether I was the “ Girondin Ancient 
Briton.” 

IV 

I had repressed my desire to talk of Maud, though 
Barker was occasionally arch about a certain Dora whom 
he favoured for lunch, while Tyler and Merton frequently 
exchanged within my hearing views on women where 
biblical substantives and Stuart adjectives curiously clashed 
with modern Cockney. Prudence or reserve prevented me 
from doing likewise, for, nothing is, after all, so interesting 
to talk about as women, especially conquered women. But 
then I had not conquered Maud. Three months had 
elapsed, and I did not seem to have advanced much beyond 
the stage I attained the first evening, though our oppor- 
tunities were many, while the tolerance that surrounded us 
was almost incomprehensible. Lulu did not trouble us, 
any more than she troubled anybody else; the sulky flaxen- 
haired girl had not in three months exchanged with me 
more than a dozen sentences beyond daily salutations. 
Lulu seemed to live in a dream, and I realised that this 
was a dream of romance induced by her fierce appetite 
for novelettes. If I met Lulu in the hall she was either 
coming in or going out with Beliaks Millions or Daisy and 
the Duke; sometimes she was coming in with a bundle of 


94 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


these things, which she bought in the Edgware Road at 
the rate of seven for sixpence; and though they evidently 
served her as a drug, she was not ashamed of them. Per- 
haps they were a habit rather than a drug, and they bred 
in me another habit, that of thinking of her (infrequently) 
in her studious attitude: china-blue eyes and mouth open, 
absolute inexpressiveness ; she seldom laughed or wept ; 
she read. And then she forgot. This I know, for Lulu left 
novelettes behind her like a trail; I found them on the 
dining-room sideboard, in the drawing-room, in other places 
the most remarkable of which was not the bath-room. So 
I ventured to experiment, to steal a novelette from the new 
set she had left on a chair and substitute an old one, which 
happened to be clean. I told Maud, but she remained 
unmoved. 

“ Bless you,” she said, " she^ll never know.” 

Certainly she showed no sign of knowing, for she read 
the old novelette right through. Maud was not afflicted 
with the same disease: her reading, in addition to the 
Daily Graphic (discarded a few months later for the 
Mirror), was made up mainly of the Era, which she went 
through from title to printer’s name, and of the Sporting 
and Dramatic, in which she held a sixth share with five 
other members of the Tinman Academy. 

“We draw for it once a week,” she confided to me; 
“comes in handy for cutting out; got Sarer Bernard out 
of it this time, stuck her in the looking-glass.” 

I found out that Maud had plastered the wall-paper 
in her corner of the bedroom with pictures of a number of 
actors and actresses and especially of comedians. One 
picture postcard, too valuable to be put in the album, was 
signed “ Yours sincerely, Dan Leno.” 

“ He did ’em for the lot of us this summer, when old 
Tinman took us to his special.” 

This is hearsay, for I had never entered the bedroom 
Maud shared with Lulu, and I never entered it to the end. 
I once caught Maud on the threshold before dinner, but 


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as I moved she slammed the door in my face and did not 
speak to me that evening. Truly Mr. and Mrs. Hooper 
were justified in their trust; they accepted that Maud and 
I were great friends, could afford to let us wrangle and talk 
all the evening in the dining-room. The family never 
assembled in the drawing-room after the first evening. 

“ You don’t mind, Mr. Cadoresse, do you? ” said Mrs. 
Hooper. “ I think the dining-room’s so much more 
homey.” 

I agreed, and for my part, never put my evening clothes 
on again to dine at St. Mary’s Terrace. We settled very 
comfortably in the dining-room, where Mrs. Hooper went 
on working tea-cloths and table-centres, to be given away 
in due course on birthdays and Christmases ; Lulu 
stolidly read of peers, honest maidens and motor-car elope- 
ments (I wonder whether they elope in aeroplanes in 
the modern novelette) ; Mr. Hooper was out three nights 
a week, debating, or attending Masonic meetings: on 
other nights he often engaged me in conversation as to 
“ The history and customs of foreign peoples ” or read 
his substitute for the Bible, Fyfe’s Five Thousand Facts 
and Fancies. Meanwhile I worked with grammar and 
dictionary until Maud, jealous of my absorption in any- 
thing but herself, though she did not seem particularly 
to want my attentions, suddenly threw a newspaper or one 
of her mother’s reels of cotton on my open book. Maud 
always threw, and an expression in her eyes told me when 
she was about to do so; it was her instinct: in a Swiss 
hotel she would have thrown bread by the pound. 

“Maud, my dear, how can you?” Mrs. Hooper would 
say, with a look of reproach in her mild eyes. But Maud 
could, and her mother had given up serious interference. 
Sometimes we made too much noise, disturbed Mr. Hooper 
in his study of Five Thousand Facts and Fancies; on one 
of these occasions he raised his head and remarked: 

“ Since you’ve got to make so much noise, Maud, you’d 
better go up to the drawing-room and try the piano.” 


96 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ Talk of bright ideas ! ” Maud cried ; “ you take the 
biscuit, Pa.” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Maud,” said Mrs. 
Hooper, helpless but admiring. “ Don’t turn all the gas 
on, dear.” 

“ I won’t turn any gas on at all. You can listen, and 
hear me read you off the Dead March in Saul, as sung by 
Mr. Dutch Daly, Esquire, all done by kindness and by the 
light of my glowing orb. Come along and be the stalls, 
old coffee-pot.” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t call Mr. Cadoresse ‘ coffee-pot,’ ” 
moaned Mrs. Hooper. 

“ Well, he is a coffee-pot, aren’t you.^ Or is it the Red 
Lion you slip round to every night on the Q. T. ? ” 

“ It’s only coffee,” I said as I opened the door for her. 
“ Honest Injun.” 

“ That’s right, we’ll make a John Bull of you by and 
by, I don’t think.” 

It was not the first time I had been allowed to accom- 
pany Maud to the icy drawing-room, where she tortured 
the old piano into songs in which were weepings and 
wailings and gnashing of wires. It no longer struck me 
as extraordinary to be alone with her; I was contented, 
having had my coffee at a dreadful little Italian restaurant 
in the Harrow Road; I was in the after-dinner gallant 
mood. 

“ Stop it,” said Maud, freeing herself from my sudden 
grasp as we entered the dark room. “ Stop it, I say. I 
won’t have my hair pulled.” 

I kissed her at random on neck and cheek, seeking her 
lips. 

“ Oh ! do behave,” she protested weakly ; then she 
pushed me away. “If you don’t stop it I’ll go downstairs 
again.” I released her. “ There. That’s better. You 
be good.” She kissed me lightly on the cheek, murmured 
“ sauce-box,” and eluded me in the dark. 

I lit the candles for her, as I had learned that she must 


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not be coerced; she had to be irritated by indifference or 
handled as lightly as a butterfly. 

“ You dare/’ she said warningly, and began one of her 
noisy tunes. She smiled, rolled her brown eyes and shook 
her curls. Smiling all the time, she sang a tune I had heard 
already at some hall. It was incongruous to hear this 
pretty girl declare that: 

“ It ain’t all ’oney and it ain’t all jam, 

Wheelin’ round the ’ouses a three-wheeled pram . . 

And it was delightful that this dainty creature should 
sing of slums, babies, pubs, lodgers, sausages and cheese; 
it was unexpected; she was the flower on a dunghill. I 
laughed as she sang, and she smiled more broadly. She 
winked roguishly, and I went to her side, gently stroked 
the back of her firm neck; she seemed indifferent to the 
caress, went on with her song: 

“. . . I ’aven’t any money, I got nuffin’ to eat, 

I’m walkin’ round the ’ouses on me poor ole feet . . .” 

I leaned down and softly kissed her neck, first on the left 
and then a little further, and then again, surrounding her 
plump neck with a ring of kisses. She continued to sing 
without resenting or seeming to appreciate the caresses. 
Did she know I was kissing her.^ Yes: 

“ Oo,” she said at last, “ you’re tickling.” 

But still she went on singing, and she did not strike a 
single wrong note though I went on caressing her neck, 
playing with her soft brown curls. And even when I sud- 
denly grew rough, seized her chin and kissed her mouth, 
she showed no anger: as soon as I released her she burst 
out with: 

“ Good-bye, oh, rose of summer’s sowing, 

Good-bye, oh, flower-scented wind ...” 

“ Oh, do give over,” she protested angrily, for I had 
put my arm round her waist, lifted her off the piano stool; 


98 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I crushed her against my chesty covered her face with 
greedy kisses; a thin film hung over my eyes, so that, 
round a candle, I could, see a zone of purple. 

“ Maud, Maud, my darling, my angel, I love you, I 
adore you,” I murmured thickly into her hair. She did 
not struggle, she seemed frightened as I grew bolder. 
And for a moment she seemed to respond to my passion; 
she coiled one arm round my neck, and as our lips met I had 
the terrible thrill of victory. 

“ Do you love me.^ ” I asked. 

** Oh, go on.” 

“ You do.” 

“ Well, perhaps I do.” 

“ Say it.” 

“ Say it,” I repeated fiercely, and I think that in my 
anger I savagely shook her. 

“ I do love you.” 

And with that I had to be content; never did she say 
simply and splendidly, the “ I love you ” for which I 
waited. She seemed to respond, she did not rebel against 
my caresses, but she had her fixed limits and, if I grew 
over-bold, would repulse me without showing offence or 
content. 

“ Now then, that’ll do,” she said at last that night; 
“ stop it. What d’you take me for ? Bit o’ butter- 
scotch ? ” 

She sat down at the piano, leaving me angry and per- 
plexed, and began again: 

Good-bye, oh, rose of summer’s sowing. 

Good-bye, oh, flower-scented wind . . 

I looked at her meekly, full of dim realisations. And 
yet she smiled as she sang, practised her stage tricks, 
languished first to the right and then to the left, and 
looked up towards a gallery crowded by her imagination 
with “ boys ” to whom she winked. I saw her as every- 
body’s thing and wondered why she could be nobody’s 


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thing; I questioned whether she loved me, liked me or 
preferred my attentions to none; it was very difficult to 
make her out. 

“ Well, sulky,” she said, as she finished her third song. 
The jocularity of the address did not seem to clash in her 
mind with the last words of her lyric: 

“. . . We’ll meet again in heaven blue.” 

I did not reply, still looked at her, sunken in my ugly 
mood. 

“ Look here,” she said brightly. “ 111 have to give 
you a good old talking-to if you go on like this.” She 
stood up, leaned an elbow on the piano and rested her 
head on her hand. “ I didn’t say I wanted to spoon. No 
fear. Why don’t you wait till you’re asked ’Stead of sit- 
ting there with a face like yesterday. You take my tip 
and don’t make so free.” 

“ I didn’t make free with you,” I said, acidly. 

“ Well, if that’s what you call not making free I’d 
rather not know what you do call making free.” 

I stood up, went to the wall and vacantly gazed at a 
picture of the Queen, while Maud sat down with a thump 
on the piano stool and thundered out another music-hall 
tune. I thought bitterly that she was playing it very 
badly, that anger could make her miss notes, while caresses 
could not. At that moment I hated her, and half resolved 
to go to my room. But Maud, on finishing the noisy 
tune, was banging an accompaniment to a monotone of 
her own composition: 

‘‘ I don’t care, I don’t care. 

Let him go to Paree-Mayfair, 

I don’t care, I don’t care. 

Let him go to Paree-Mayfair.” 

For some two minutes I bore with this nonsense, which 
grew louder and louder and more purposeful. I knew it 
as half-defiance, half-signal. It made me tingle; I felt 


100 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


like a bull that becomes angrier with every thrust of the 
handerillas. 

“ Stop it/’ I shouted as I strode to the piano. 

The laughing eyes were fixed upon me, the red mouth 
was open, and I could see the white throat swell as she 
screamed her idiotic refrain. And her gibe was so subtly 
aphrodisiac that I did not know how much her youth and 
grace drew me. I hated her, despised her; I wanted to 
seize and twist her firm neck, shake her, kick her; and a 
sense of degradation mixed with my delight as I clasped 
both arms round her, lifted her off the stool: 

“ I don’t care, I don’t care. 

Let him go to Paree-Mayfair . . 

Maud screamed as I carried her to the sofa. And then, 
for some moments, there was silence while I caressed her 
with a ferocity born of my baulked hunger for her. She 
laughed on a high note; she did not struggle though I 
knew I was painfully crushing the hand I held, though 
a heavy curl fell across my face as I bent to kiss her. 
She did not return the kisses I pressed upon her eyelids, 
her neck, her lips; she remained quiescent in my grasp, 
as if aware that she would struggle in vain, as if conscious 
that the brute must dominate awhile until fluting reason 
can be heard. But as I held her I was revengeful rather 
than joyous, for I knew that hers was but a partial sur- 
render, that she was paying in small favours for atten- 
tions and pleasures, that I would never break the steely 
barrier of her coldness, that on my exceeding the limits 
formulated by her sex-policy I would be repulsed and 
dismissed. Oh, in her own language, she wouldn’t give 
herself away. 

She sat on my knees, one arm round my neck, limp and 
half -smiling ; she seemed tired, as if some content had 
come to her out of the wooing my prudence had restrained. 
But there was no heat of excitement in the hand I held; 


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it was firm, cool, able no doubt to carry without tremor a 
glass brimful of water. She would not spill a drop. And 
I knew bitterly that my eyelids were moist, as if something 
inside me had cried out with pain and had tried very 
hard to weep. 

She sat up and away from me at last, pushed up her 
flying hair. My ! ” she said ; “ you’re a bit of all right, 
you are.” A. very little, grudging admiration filtered to 
me through the phrase, but she eluded me as I tried to 
clasp her again. 

“ No,” she said, firmly. “ Never no more again. Mister. 
One might think you were barmy on the crumpet the way 
you go on, pulling a girl about like a rag doll. If that’s 
the way they do it in Border I’m not surprised you got the 
hoof. No,” she added, a note of anger in her voice as I 
seized her hand ; “ it’s closing time, house full. Keep off 
the grass, I tell you,” she cried as she stood up, “ and talk 
sensibly or ” 

We talked sensibly. I tried to tell Maud what I did 
at the office; I described old Purkis, Farr and the per- 
pendicular hair. “ Don’t be dirty,” was her comment on 
my description of Farr; Tyler and Barker gained no ap- 
preciation, but she seemed interested in Hugh Lawton. 

“ Sounds like a bit of a toff.” 

Oh, Maud, if I had met you ten years later would you 
not have said Hugh Lawton was a k’nut ! 

She pestered me with questions. How old was he? 
What was he like? But exactly? Yes, she did like ’em 
fair. Was he his father’s partner? Would he be? Would 
I? She was interested in everything that was material; 
she did not know that there was anything non-material. 
She did not love; she spooned. She had no ambitions; 
she had desires. She could not feel remorse; she could 
know that she had put her foot in it. She did not believe 
in God; she could fear hell. 

Hugh Lawton appeared as a shadow on her mental 
screen, my superior because he bought his ties in the 


102 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Burlington Arcade, while I bought mine in Cheapside, 
just as I was superior to the young men who bought their 
ties in Edgware Road. Money, rank, position, prospects — 
she could understand all that, but I could make her under- 
stand nothing else. I tried to explain the Saxon business 
letter. 

“ Oh, German, you mean,” she said, vaguely. 

I gave it up. I tried to make her see what it meant to 
be an Englishman, to feel, to think like one. 

“ Oh yes, I know,” she said ; “ didn’t you say you could 
get out of camp, or whatever it is, if you naturalise ” 

We could talk only of facts; we could hardly talk of 
love. For her love was a subject with two compartments; 
in the first she put questionable jokes, which I now realise 
she did not quite understand; in the second was a singular 
cloying composition : hand-holding on the F ront at Brighton, 
moongazing on the River, ultimate marriages involving 
nightly attendances at the halls or theatres; there was a 
strain of melancholy in it: the young lover was quite as 
pleasant dead as alive, for one laid flowers on his grave, 
and one was “ true ” to him ; later on one was com- 
forted by an older man, whom one met by “ mother’s 
grave.” One married the older man, and somehow, after 
lying in one’s own grave, one might meet the first love in 
heaven. There were love-letters too, but she called them 
“ silly talk.” 

All this mixture of mental sensuality and sentiment 
rested on a paradoxic foundation of ignorant purity. 
Maud was cold, or rather unawakened. She had not 
been told: she had heard, at Tinman’s, in the street, but 
she had not been marked by her knowledge; she had not 
connected the fragments of enlightenment which had 
come her way. Essentially English, she had few curiosi- 
ties and did not devote to the theoretic side of passion 
the thought and research hardly a French girl neglects; 
the subject did not interest, did not attract her; she knew 
in a sort of way,” and did not want to know any more. 


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lOS 

Indeed, she often repulsed me with a sharp “ Stop it/’ when 
I tried to correlate in her mind the impressions I found 
there. 

You were pure in your own way, little flower of the 
London gutter. 


V 

Of course, the Hoopers were trying to entrap me into 
marriage. I found that out later, with some surprise, for, 
in my own opinion, I was not a hon parti, and I did not 
realise that a young man with a salary of a hundred and 
twenty a year could be appreciated by the genteel Hoopers. 
I did not, for years, grasp that an English girl can leave her 
father’s Kensington house, his brougham and her skating 
club to control a suburban brick box and a twelve pound 
“ general.” Nor did I understand that Mrs. Hooper would 
have been quite satisfied to see Maud installed with me 
in an upper part in the Harrow Road, that she accepted 
her husband’s view: “ Young people must not expect to 
begin where their parents left off.” Besides, Maud had not 
the dowry usual in civilised countries, I think, and, even 
now I am a little uneasy when the English girl plunges for 
love and nothing a year. 

They are too hard on the dot, those sentimental English, 
who, by the way, shrink from dots and insist upon mar- 
riage settlements. I like to think that a girl does not come 
penniless into her husband’s house, that she has the option 
between maintaining her financial independence and, there- 
fore, conjugal affection, or helping her husband in his 
career, or keeping her money to educate her children. 
In spite of my own record I still distrust those matches 
made in hot blood, without regard for class, suitability, 
monetary chances. And I don’t like to think of all those 
English girls sold in marriage to the first bidder, lest there 
be no second. We sell to the best bidder, the English to 
the first. And they do sell, for what can a penniless 


104 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


woman do in presence of a hated but moneyed husband? 
Love ! yes, there’s love — but after all, why marry ? 

So I never thought of marriage with Maud. I wanted 
to marry an English girl some time, a girl I would love, but 
ideas as to suitability were fast set in my mind. I could 
not have introduced Maud to my mother if my mother 
had had experience of English girls. And I wanted a girl 
with some money: I was not going to hunt money, but 
one must have money. I looked upon my affair with Maud 
as an adventure, just as she looked upon it as a flirtation; 
I still hoped to bring it to a satisfactory end, and until 
that time could not brag of it at the office, but of Lottie 
I could brag and did. 

For I was not faithful to Maud. There was no reason 
why I should have been, as faithfulness is, after all, no 
more than acquired insensitiveness; also faithfulness cuts 
one off from experience. In this respect only did I make 
exceptions to the British code I was adopting; I could 
not bring myself to find other eyes dull because those of 
Maud were bright. They were not dull, and they were 
rewarding, for there are not two looks alike, two smiles 
as witching, and the tender break in a woman’s voice 
when she murmurs and laughs low is never twice quite the 
same. Those soft low laughs are all of a family, but dif- 
ferent. Appetite for adventure, for an excitement that 
was mainly mental, drove me into perpetual conflict with 
women. I had to look into the ej’^es of the waitress when 
I ordered my chop, and if I made her blush it was a 
success : I took this blush back to the office and hung 
it up like a rosy curtain across the Fenchurch Street 
window. In the Underground, in the streets, on the top 
of jolting horse-buses, where propinquity combines with 
the excitement of release from work to saturate the air 
with aphrodisiac vapours, I had eyes for all those fair 
heads and curly brown heads, and clear blue eyes and bold 
black eyes, tokens of some fiery southern ancestry. To 
this day I cannot walk the streets without disquiet, so 


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treacherously soft and treacherously pure are these English 
girls. 

For they are pure, and I was not very successful. In- 
deed, if I had not had the persistency of the spider I 
would not have continued my pursuit of them in the face 
of the snubs which I received. They were afraid of 
me, the foreigner, for the cold mantle of their purity let 
through disquiet when I drew near ; I have been told, 
and have no reason to doubt it, that there is no banter in 
my black eyes. I have never looked upon a woman, old 
or young, without there being a caress in my glance, how- 
ever casual; I have no talent for banter, I never flirt, 
I am always dangerous. They knew it, and if they did 
not snub me, soon they gave me short answers, were “ sur- 
prised at me ” or “ wouldn’t have thought it of me.” One 
of them, at Earl’s Court, I think, threw me a frightened 
glance and ran away. But even if I had never suc- 
ceeded, I would still have tried, for I had in my life 
the young bachelor’s demon, loneliness. Often Maud was 
out with a “ pal,” or “ studying ” at the halls ; then, after 
a while, I looked up from my books, gazed at Mrs. Hooper, 
knitting or embroidering, at Mr. Hooper, deep-buried in 
Science Siftings or Tit-Bits. A placid air of content hung 
over them, while Lulu, in an armchair, read at extreme 
speed some tale of dairymaid and duke. The atmosphere 
was — stuffy, and there was about the very gas an air of 
finality: it would never, never turn into electric light. I 
would make an effort, mumble out: “ . . . but worship 
and humbug are exceptions; though the accent be on the 
first syllable the final consonant is redoubled.” Then I 
would memorise the double ps and gs, contrast the words 
with “ refer,” — worship, worshipping — refer, referring — 
until the rule began to slip away and I ceased to know 
whether the typical word . was pronounced “ refer ” or 
“ reffer.” 

Up to my room on those nights. First a vicious casting 
of my body upon the bed, accompanied by an internal 


106 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


cry: “ What shall I do? what shall I do? ” Then a steady 
gaze at the text, “ The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not 
want.” In the bad light I had to guess at the queer old 
English characters. A muttered curse on all clerics, 
springing from my Jacobin temper. There was nothing to 
do, I wanted to do nothing. I leaped off the bed, walked 
round the room, examining each article, yellow-tiled 
splasher, old red cloth, swivel mirror ; the pictures next, the 
wretched sentimental “ Peacemaker.” Costume-play love ! 
pah ! Then “ In the Garden of Eden,” a clerk and a 
typist, in nineteenth-century fig-leaves. The Jubilee proces- 
sion troubled me on those nights ; it always seemed to 
think me emotional, hysterical, un-English. 

But at last I had looked at everything, felt mental 
nausea in front of my books, looked into the garden, then 
sodden with winter rains. I would stand for some moments 
in the middle of the room, slowly walk to the window, 
stare into the blackness, walk back to the bed, then back 
to the window. Pause. Then I would begin to go round 
the room, slowly, hands in pockets, head down. As I 
passed, the dirty carpet lost all its pattern. I began to 
walk faster, round and round, half-conscious of impressions, 
black window, empty grate, dirty boots. Faster and faster 
still, like a convict in his cell or a beast at the Zoo. I 
went round and round the room, which seemed to grow 
smaller all the time; I was like a squirrel in its wheel with 
a night’s turning in front of it. And, as I turned and 
turned, one thought speared my loneliness: what shall I 
do ? what shall I do ? And again and again it came, ebbing 
and flowing, like successive waves beating upon a shore. 

At last I would seize my hat, rush out of the house, 
slamming the front door to get some noise into my life. 
Sometimes I would walk aimlessly on, eyes towards the 
ground, as fast as I could, contemptuous of traffic and 
butting into passers-by, until I stopped quite suddenly at 
Hendon or Shepherd’s Bush, just tired and dulled enough 
to want my bed. And on other nights I would climb into 


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the gallery of a music-hall and stare at the backs of the 
people in front of me, or drink whiskey on the top of stout 
in a public-house, just to exchange a word with a barmaid 
or find interest in a “ drunk.” Or I would engage in long, 
aimless pursuits of women who had caught my fancy. Once 
I ran after a cab laden with luggage and offered my breath- 
less services after a two-mile sprint. One must do some- 
thing, one must. 

It was on one such night 1 met Lottie. I had walked 
a long way, far beyond Notting Hill, when I caught her 
up — a slim, fair girl. The obvious shopgirl, badly dressed, 
with cheap lace sticking out of her old, modish gray coat 
and two visible brooches. I found out a little later that 
she wore two more — also a pendant and a necklace of 
sham pearls. 

“ Are you going far ” I asked. 

“ Just about as far as turn-back,” said the girl. I 
saw, as she looked at me, that she must be twenty-five. 
Fair hair, blue eyes, pale face: five more years of good 
looks and she would be old. 

“ May I go with you? ” I asked. 

“No, thanks,” she said; “not out for chocolates, just 
had grapes.” 

But this is only the small change of London gallantry. 
Soon I was walking by Lottie’s side, holding her arm, 
unrebuked. 

She did not mind, she prattled of her “ people ” in 
Norfolk, of her situation at a stationer’s, of Kew and 
Earl’s Court, and didn’t I think those railway bridges 
cost a lot of money to build? She did not mind my going 
with her, she did not mind when I kissed her in a silent 
street of villas, she did not mind kisses, fervid or tepid. 
Lottie did not want anything or object to anything; she 
had never developed ; even her taste for pleasure was 
faint: she did not long for Sunday afternoon River trips, 
she merely liked them. I took her for a misty walk in 
Richmond Park, three days later, and she never took my 


108 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


hand, nor drew hers away when I grasped it. She never 
asked me my name, thus never knew it: I was a “ fellow,” 
and when for a few brief hours I was a lover, a “ fellow ” 
I remained. Not for a moment did any enthusiasm leap 
up to meet mine, and when I dropped out of her life, out 
of sheer weariness, I do not suppose she suffered. She 
could not forget; she had nothing to remember; doubt- 
less she went from a “ fellow ” to a “ fellow.” 

The ignominy of it lay heavy upon me sometimes, and 
often I swore that not even the walking round and round in 
my room would drive me to this. But it did: what can one 
do.^ what can one do? Ignominious as was this adventure, 
the first of many, it was, however, an adventure, and I 
had to brag of it. I began by throwing out hints to 
Barker; I would in any case have done so, but he began 
by talking of Dora. 

“ She’s a little bit of all right, is Dora. And I rather 
think yours truly is a bit of a favourite with her.” 

“ How can you tell? ” 

“ Oh, I go late — perhaps that’s my little plan, and 
there’s never more than two or three at her tables at half- 
past two. So she comes and sits down and gasses away 
about this, that and the other, and we have a fine old time. 
Blime! if I wasn’t a married man ” 

“ What does that matter ? ” 

“ Now then, now then. None of your continental ways 
here. They won’t wash. Besides, Cadoresse, you don’t 
understand English girls; they’re not after you like flies 
round a honey-pot.” 

Memories of Maud collided with memories of Lottie and 
others, and I looked inimically at this handsome, well- 
brushed young man who stood before me like Don Juan 
lecturing Casanova. It was absurd, I reflected, that a 
suburban puritan should masquerade as a gay dog, and 
more absurd that so attractive a young man should be a 
puritan. For Barker looked very smart in his soft, dark 
grey tweed; he managed to buy good clothes in Poultry 


BARBEZAN & CO. 


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for three guineas, while I failed in Sackville Street for 
five. He had an agreeable, open face, tanned once a week 
on the golf course, fine gray eyes, a small, beautifully-cut 
mouth; but for a small chin and a very slight narrowness 
of forehead he would have been as handsome as Hugh 
Lawton. He exasperated me, therefore, for two rea- 
sons. 

“ Aren’t they.^ ” I said at length. “ Well, they’re not so 

farouche as you think. Barker. There’s ” I was going 

to say “ my landlady’s daughter,” but honesty twisted the 
phrase: “Many of them are quite easy. Why, you can 
talk to English girls in the street.” 

“ Oh, you can,” said Farr, who had come in as we 
talked ; “ but everybody knows that sort, they don’t 
count.” 

I suddenly understood an English attitude: two kinds 
of women, the accessible undesirable and the inaccessible 
desirable. 

“ I cannot tell whether they count,” I said, “ but ” 

I told them the story of my meeting with Lottie, of 
my subsequent meetings, fully stated her in terms of con- 
quest. I enlarged upon the adventure: Lottie’s hair shim- 
mered like gold, her pale eyes became as deep, blue, sunlit 
pools; in my story she was fervid, passionate; she became 
the Golden Girl; a lovely romantic light (shot with the 
fires of passion) flowed over Netting Hill. 

“Go on with you,” said Barker at last; “you rotten 
dog.” 

“And what did she say to that?” Farr asked. There 
was a glow in his ugly little eyes, and the black hairs 
moved as his nostrils twitched. 

Ah, this man liked my story; puritan Englishman, what 
is there under your black coat? I elaborated the story, 
filled it with response, made it dramatic ; a histrion, I liked 
to play upon Farr. 

“ Well,” he said at length, exhaling a puff of breath 
from his white cheeks, “ she’s a ” 


110 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


How can men say such things? or such words? I am 
not yet used to the English vocabulary. And to apply such 
words to love! 

For it is love, it is always love. Even inarticulate, even 
formal, even cold, it is love and always love, and because 
it is love it is wonderful. I am in love with love. It 
makes me happy to know there are lovers, thousands, mil- 
lions of lovers, and it makes me miserable to think I 
shall die, because then I shall no longer know love. It 
made me shudder when he suddenly dragged from my poor 
little adventure its coat of many colours. But Barker was 
not coarse; he had none of Farr’s hateful sensuousness, the 
sensuousness which, among his like, expresses itself in 
words from the fishmarket. He lectured me: 

“ You know, Cadoresse, it sounds very nice and romantic, 
all that, but what about the girl? Have you thought of 
what it means for her ? ” 

“ It means for her what it means for me.” 

“ No, you silly old josser; you’re all like that abroad. 
You don’t understand women; you think they’re just like 
you. Well, they aren’t: they feel disgrace and lose their 
self-respect. Why, there’s no knowing what harm you may 
have done the girl; you may have ruined her life for all 
you know.” 

I suggested that as Lottie was not my first adventure 
I might be deemed not to be her first, either. 

“ That’s got nothing to do with it,” said Barker, severely; 
“ it’s your responsibility all the same. Put yourself in her 
shoes, and perhaps you’ll see she can’t hold her head up 
again ; she feels dishonoured, she may break her heart over 
it, refuse to marry somebody else.” 

“ Oh, stuff,” I said. 

They laughed: that was not the word I ought to have 
used, but I could not bear to use their word. 

Barker went on with his reprimand. As an enlightened 
chapel-goer he had to turn me from the path of sin, and as 
he talked I understood the Englishman better, understood 


BARBEZAN & CO. 


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the depth of his illusion about women. Barker saw woman 
as a calm, passionless, charming creature, anxious, in his 
own words, “ to marry to have someone to take care of.” 
He was not mercenary, and could not believe that woman 
was mercenary; he could not believe that a woman could 
want anything her husband did not want; he credited 
her with no initiatives, with desiring nothing save dresses 
and babies. Barker thought that women did not mind, 
at thirty, being spinsters in their fathers’ houses, if those 
homes were comfortable. If in those days there had 
been militant suffragettes he would have told them to go 
home and mind the baby. He loved his wife, who repre- 
sented woman; he looked upon her as an ideal and as a 
type: religious, domesticated, obedient, gay, loyal and 
respectably romantic. He would have given her to drink 
his last drop of blood but would not have spared her 
a penny for a newspaper. He thought she was perfect, 
that woman was perfect, that woman was so noble and 
beautiful that she must be set on a pedestal and wor- 
shipped: but she was never to get off the pedestal and do 
what she liked. According to Barker it was the husband 
knew what his wife liked, and her tastes conformed singu- 
larly with his own. 

I began that day to see why Englishwomen are so 
bored. 

At the end of the lecture Farr abruptly said: 

“ Heard that limerick. Barker, about the young lady 
of Turin ” 

The limerick was recited. Disgusting. Then came two 
jokes out of one of the weeklies, where wit was absent and 
foulness abundant. Barker laughed uproariously. 

“ Heard that story about ” ? 

A very pretty actress was dragged through the gutter. 

Tyler came in, contributed his quota to the conversa- 
tion, and little Merton drew near, sniggering and squirm- 
ing ; a nasty, hot blush climbed up his rosy cheeks. Clearly 
this abominable talk bore no relation to actual fact; it 


112 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


was j ust talk : they never connected those stories with living 
men and women. 

These Englishmen! They keep their ideas apart, like 
dogs each in one kennel, lest they should fight, I suppose. 
Or no, the process is less conscious ; they have their 
standards and their lists of points, with which to classify 
the dogs. One kind of dog goes under “ spaniels,” another 
under “ retrievers,” and so on, and there are kennels for 
mongrels and kennels for curs, and kennels for pariah 
dogs, and there is a big, secure pen for “ foreign dogs.” 
They padlock that one and put barbed wire round it for 
fear they might themselves go too close and be bitten. One 
thing they never do, and that is connect the mongrel and 
the spaniel and say: “Both are dogs.” 

Good, pure women and “ bad lots ” — that is all they 
see. It is no use saying that convention can make the 
first out of dullards, or that romance can lift the second 
upon wings and carry them up aloft: that would interfere 
with the classification. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 
I 

I HAVE not done what I set out to do. I have been 
too critical, allowed later and more judicial impressions 
to fog the sharp, partisan views I took of England in 
those early days, and to clear the chaos created in my 
mind by their conflict. I cannot, now that I speak English 
so well that people ask me whether I am Scotch or Welsh, 
now that I conform to English conventions and believe in 
a few of them, restore the freshness of the mind I brought 
from France. I figure the past as one may trace out on 
some very old Italian fresco a faint design over which an 
economical iconoclast painted another picture. I could not 
see England for the English. 

I gave them all more or less heroic qualities (except 
Farr, whom I endowed with undeservedly villainous 
traits), because I understood them only in flashes. They 
always came out with strong, high lights. A flash, and 
I saw Barker, for instance, as the moderate, sober, honest 
man, a little narrow but perfectly calm, irrepressibly calm 
— and then I saw him no more. I have said that I thought 
him limited, uninformed on the woman question, but I 
excused him to myself. I was always the advocate of 
the English: if they injured me and advocacy became 
impossible, I refused to prosecute. Thus, silly old Purkis 
stood as the rock of security, Tyler, Merton as energetic, 
intelligent young men, finely pure (as a rule) and incapable 
of playing anybody a dirty trick. Hugh Lawton repre- 
sented for me in the flesh what the young wrestlers on 

113 


114 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


the Embankment represent in bronze. Oh, Olympian 
Hugh, where is the laurel-wreath that sat so well on your 
currycombed head? 

It is because I saw no more than the main lines that I 
understood the English: it takes a foreigner to do that. 
If an Englishman struck me as pure-minded, he was 
Galahad; if strong, he was Hercules; if bad, he was Jack 
the Ripper. Nowadays I judge men, perhaps better, 
perhaps with more regard for shades of temperament, 
but not so surely; I do not so readily part the lions from 
the unicorns. I judged violently, in a prejudiced spirit, 
and I almost invariably approved. If I had hesitations 
as to the genteel Hoopers, as to the clerks of Barbezan, I 
think I had none about the Lawtons after the august 
dinner. It took place in January. Invited because my 
Saxon business letter had amused Mrs. Lawton and be- 
cause my status was, thanks to my name, not quite that of 
a clerk, I found myself, at half-past seven (for the 
dinner hour had not yet travelled to a quarter-past eight) 
inwardly a little shy and outwardly very bold, seated at 
a large round table between Mrs. Lawton, a sprightly, good- 
looking matron, and a delicate fair-haired girl, Edith, her 
daughter. I have no very clear memory of the first lap 
of the conversation, for the preoccupation of clothes, after 
all these years, still hangs stifling over the occasion. I 
was again wearing the wrong clothes. I always was, and 
to this day I am never safe in this country where the 
wearing of the black is governed half by rules and half by 
intuitions ; whether I choose tails or dinner j acket, black tie 
and waistcoat or white, I am never sure that I shall be 
in the majority. Now clothes is the one thing in the 
world in which a Frenchman who is trying to become an 
Englishman does not want to be original. When he is not 
trying to become an Englishman, he does want to be 
original, and I have vivid memories of a white lace tie 
I used to wear, now unfortunately lost, before I realised 
that Englishmen stared at it bewildered, as if they were 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


115 


Hottentots confronted with a motor-car. But, that night, 
my trouble was not confined to my tie, which was black. 
One seat away was Edward Kent, a short, fair young 
man, who looked as if he shaved three times a day; his 
tailcoat was moulded into him, his tie and waistcoat sat, 
precise and intolerably white, on his plump body; Mr. Law- 
ton too, wore tails, but for mysterious reasons a black 
waistcoat, while Hugh, to make my unease complete, had 
dared a dinner jacket with a white waistcoat and tie. I 
judged this to be modish, but remained cheerless, for one 
thing was quite clear: I was not white enough. When, in 
later days, I tried to be white enough, I was generally too 
white; I could never grade entertainments, gauge the dif- 
ference between dinners “ Class A (family and two inti- 
mates),” and dinners “ Class B (four strangers),” and din- 
ners “Class C (unlimited ostentation).” Nor could I dis- 
tinguish between the livery of the master of the house, 
that of youth, that of the guest — between the livery for 
food, the livery for song, the livery for the dance. In 
Hugh’s ’Varsity phrase, I managed to dress either as a 
“ cad ” or as a “ bounder.” He never said this of or to me, 
as that would not have been like Hugh, but such was his 
classification; for Hugh there were only the dressed, the 
underdressed, the overdressed. It took me four years of 
labour to enter the “ dressed ” class frequently. English 
syntax was much easier. But, that night, as I rolled anxious 
eyes from the chattering Mrs. Lawton to the shy Edith, 
when “ cad ” and “ bounder ” were unknown terms, I felt 
like a waiter or a mute. I hardly knew what I said, as I 
glared at the opposition clothes, though little seemed to 
be expected of me save to listen. Mrs. Lawton had noth- 
ing to say, but she said it very prettily ; in my perturbation 
her gossip was very comforting. 

“ You must dislike this weather very much,” she said, 
“ after the South. I know what it’s like, for I simply 
can’t stand London after the middle of January. I sim- 
ply have to go to the Riviera.” 


116 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Riviera ? ” I said blankly, quite unable to connect this 
word with the Cote d'Azur. 

“ Yes, the Riviera. I generally go to Cannes, or Men- 
tone, though that’s getting impossible now the Germans 
have found it out. Of course, there’s Monte Carlo, but 
there’s too much noise, too many people! what I want is a 
quiet place, just to sit in the sun ” 

Mrs. Lawton developed at immense length her idea of 
a quiet life; I smiled as much as I could, I tried to smile 
with my ear, I suppose, and I do not remember what she 
took to be a quiet life. I have a vague feeling that its 
quietude was rather eventful. Meanwhile I inspected the 
guests, Hugh and Mr. Lawton, who were as rigid and 
polite outside as inside the office, and then my cheerful 
neighbour. Mrs. Lawton was pleasing enough. She 
looked about thirty-seven or eight, but at the time was 
actually forty-three, for she had the Englishwomen’s 
secret of looking much less than their age, probably be- 
cause they do not grow up; she was dark-haired, buxom, 
and her colour, though a little ruddy over the cheek- 
bones, was agreeable. I failed to find upon her face a 
trace of powder or rouge, and regretted it a little, for the 
loveliest features in the world are set off by the subtle 
wickedness of these artifices; yet I liked her, her gaiety, 
and her triangular eyes. It was Mrs. Lawton’s eyes made 
one look at her twice; to say they were triangular is the 
only way of saying that the eyelids drew close together 
at the outer corners of the sockets, while they parted a 
little wider near the nose. This ga . e the grey-green pupils 
an astonished, kitten-like air. Mrs. Lawton’s eyes were 
too well-bred to ask questions, but they always seemed a 
little surprised when information was volunteered. She 
had given those eyes to her daughter Muriel, who now 
sat almost opposite to me, and showed exactly what her 
mother had been twenty years before. Indeed, had Muriel 
not been the taller, and had not her shoulders been rather 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


117 


thin, she could well have passed for her mother’s younger 
sister. 

Muriel did not return my scrutiny, for she leaned un- 
ashamedly towards Edward Kent, who now sat stroking 
his little fat chin, while his manicured hand played with 
his glass of hock. I could hear his thin, piping voice, 
the conversation which secured him invitations to dinner. 

“ I really am, I really am,” he protested. “ You think 
I never do anything. Miss Lawton, because I never have 
anything to do. Now that’s where you’re wrong. It 
is the lazy people are the busy people because they are so 
unused to work that what they must do takes an awful 
long time.” 

“ Paradoxes,” said Muriel, raising a pretty, thin 
shoulder. 

“ That is to say, truths. Truth, you see, lives in a well, 
and you don’t know that when you see the well. It’s the 
same with paradox: you find truth in it, but you must 
haul her out.” 

“ Mr. Kent,” said Muriel, “ you are tiring me out.” 

“ You should take more exercise, then ” 

” Oh, spare us, Mr. Kent,” said Mrs. Lawton, suddenly 
forgetting me and the Riviera and leaning over to- 
wards the entertainer, “ and tell us what happened at 
Caux.” 

For several minutes I was left out; while I ate the thin 
slices of saddle of mutton and found out I liked it with 
red currant jelly, I saw that Louisa Kent was flirting 
with Hugh. She was very pretty, I thought, with her 
dark hair, her rosy colour; she had her brother’s little 
fat chin, but on her it was charming instead of being 
faintly ridiculous. She was talking quickly, in tones too 
low for me to understand what she said; perhaps she did 
not want to be overheard, though there was nothing in 
the placid smile which flickered about Hugh’s beautiful 
lips to show that he cared. It was extraordinary, but 
evidently Muriel and Louisa were ” making up ” to the 


118 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


men, and these did not even swell as conquerors, they 
basked in the sunshine that was their due. 

Indeed, no man seemed to think of the women, except 
Mr. Lawton, whom I could hear gently talking to Edith 
about Brussels, which he seemed to know well. 

“ Oh, you must ask Mr. Cadoresse,” he suddenly said, 
with a laugh. 

I turned in time to catch a faint smile and the quick, 
shy look of the girl. 

“Yes?” I said. “Can I be of service to Mademoi- 
selle? ” 

“ Oh ” She paused, blushed. “ It’s only father. 

He says that it’s not Bwar der lar Camber. He wants me 
to roll my r’s like — like ” 

“ Like me,” I said. 

Edith blushed so hotly that her neck and shoulders 
grew pink, and I thought her pretty. Insignificant, of 
course, as blue eyes and fair hair make a girl, but 
pretty. 

“ Oh — I didn’t mean — I didn’t say that — I really 
didn’t.” 

Her eyes were downcast and I wondered whether there 
were tears in them. I felt I had been clumsy, that I had 
trodden on a little flower. 

“ Cambrrr,” I said, reassuringly. 

She looked up at me, smiled, shook her head. 

“ Try,” I suggested. “ Cambrrr.” 

But she would not try. She sat smiling and blushing, 
nervously tapped on a fork with thin, white fingers that 
trembled. 

“ My little girl mustn’t be shy,” murmured Mr. Lawton. 
There was a new gentleness in the eyes that were rather 
like hers. 

“ I’m not shy, father,” she murmured, but again 
blushed. 

“ No? Then will the little girl say Cambrrr to her 
father? ” 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


119 


They laughed together. Her father! Her grandfather 
rather. I looked across to Muriel, who was still wrapped 
up in Edward Kent. That was a girl I and suddenly I 
thought of Maud, her bold brown eyes. I wished she 
could see me then, “ among the upper ten,” as she would 
have said, and I felt a little disappointed because these 
people spoke slowly, in modulated voices. They knew 
gaiety, not ragging. 

Mrs. Lawton again turned to me. Did I like London? 
Of course I had seen all the sights, the Tower? Not that 
she had ever been to the Tower, she owned. Did I like 
the English? I replied. I had plenty to say, but I could 
not talk of the things I cared for, the office, my schooling, 
my home, the Hoopers. Mrs. Lawton made no com- 
ments, and her questions were not indiscreet; she seemed 
to want to know only what I thought in general, not what 
I thought in particular. I wanted her to lay hands on 
my private life. I invited her to do so. 

“ I am quite happy in my rooms,” I said, irrelevantly ; 
“ the people are very nice to me, and it is amusing because 
there are two young girls in the house.” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Lawton, “ and it’s very handy for 
the LFnderground. Don’t you think it’s easy to get about in 
London? ” 

“Very easy,” I said. “Yes, I like it very much; and 
the City too. I like the men I meet. There is one of 
the clerks, Mrs. Lawton, whose clothes are an education, 
they are so good, though he does buy them in the City; 
he ” 

“ Ah,” said Mrs. Lawton, “ the City is a wonderful 
place. Have you seen the Lord Mayor’s coach ? ” 

The conversation went on in that way, I struggling to 
figure my own life, Mrs. Lawton inertly bent, on com- 
pelling me to sink it in the life of the crowd. I wanted 
her to tear at my personality — but that isn’t done: slie 
didn’t do it. I was angry because I was baulked, I sulked, 
allowed Mrs. Lawton to say what she liked, interposing a 


120 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


minimum of “ yeses ” and “ noes.” She did not mind. 
She was there to talk to me from half-past seven to nine; 
if I was silent she would talk a great deal; if I had a great 
deal to say, she would gracefully listen; if I made unusual 
or improper remarks she would misunderstand them and 
suavely lead me back to the safeties of the Royal Family 
or the London police. While she talked I examined the 
furniture. The dining-room was what is called hand- 
some, for there was a red paper over a white dado, a 
splendid mahogany sideboard; I could feel a thick Turkey 
carpet under my feet and see expensive-looking oils on 
the walls. But — the revelation came suddenly — it was 
the Hoopers’ dining-room; the wallpaper was the same, 
except that it had probably cost four and sixpence a piece 
instead of two shillings, and the sideboard was the same. 
True, there were no cruets nor salad-dressing bottles on it, 
but there was the tantalus. And the oils ! There were 
bad oils on the Hoopers’ red walls ! I seemed to under- 
stand the Lawtons, the Lawton breed, the “ Terraces ” 
and “ Places ” and “ Gardens ” and “ Gates ” which are 
full of Lawtons, Lawtons all alike, who buy the same 
things at different prices. As I looked at this furniture and 
those who sat among it I understood: they had tried to be 
like everybody else, and they had brought it off. That 
was why they were Good People. 

“ In the house I live in,” I tactlessly said, “ they have 
red paper in the dining-room.” 

“ They say brown is coming in,” replied Mrs. Lawton. 
“ I have seen it up at Egerton Jones’. What do you 
think of our big shops ? ” 

I told her vaguely, and as I did so, listened to the 
conversation of the others. Kent was telling the story 
I have since heard in many forms, of the judge who was 
rude to the counsel for the defence and at last pointed to 
his ear, remarking: 

“ It doesn’t matter what you say, it goes in here and 
comes out on the other side.” 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


121 


“‘No doubt, my Lord/” Kent narrated smoothly; 

there is nothing to stop it.’ ” 

Half the circle began to laugh, and before the laughter 
subsided Kent was talking mixed hockey; he did not spoil 
his effect. I heard Muriel protest against a charge of 
whacking the men’s shins, Mr. Lawton gravely remon- 
strate with Louisa, for whom the Steinway wasn’t good 
enough. 

“ Oh,” she said, “ I couldn’t give a recital in that little 
place. What’s the use of having studied with Marsay if 
I can’t have the St. James’s.^” 

I gathered that Louisa was a professional pianist, or 
about to become one. As Mrs. Lawton had turned to- 
wards Kent, I addressed Edith. 

“ I see Miss Kent is musical,” I said. 

“Oh, yes, she’s very clever,” said Edith; “she’s been 
to Dresden and she’s studied in Paris under Marsay. Now 
she’s going to give her first recital and I’m sure she’ll be a 
success, though she says nobody cares for the piano. She 
looks so well, too, on the platform; don’t you think she’s 
very pretty f ” 

“ Very,” I said. “ And you, do you play the piano? ” 

“ A little — oh, it’s nothing.” 

Edith had blushed and stammered. Curious, she could 
chatter of Louisa Kent without a trace of shyness, but a 
single reference to her own affairs deprived her of all self- 
possession. I went on talking to her, gently, as to a child, 
and little by little she became able to speak to me, not 
freely but adequately. 

“ I like it in Brussels,” she confided. “ I’m going 
to stay at least two years, to be finished as they 

99 

say. 

“ Well, I hope they will not finish you completely, as 
you are only just commenced — begun, I mean.” 

“ Begun ! ” Muriel almost screamed across the table, and 
then exploded into giggles. “What did I tell you about 
the Ancient Briton, Edith? ” 


122 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ Muriel, my dear,” said Mrs. Lawton reproachfully, 
but she smiled. 

Mr. Lawton laughed. 

” Your laurel-wreath as a student of Gothic is on your 
head, Cadoresse.” 

“ Mr. Kent,” said Muriel, faintly ; “ never say fork 
again — say prong.” 

“ I will say prong — I will say * Je prong ’ to please 
you.” 

I glared fiercely at the red paper, which was no redder 
than my ears. They were laughing at me, all of them, 
English pigs, because they couldn’t speak their own lan- 
guage. I did not reply to Mrs. Lawton’s gentle apologies 
and requests that I should not mind chaff. Chaff! they 
call insults chaff! Under that calm, that decorum, lies a 
desire to wound; hypocrites, they never lose their self- 
control save when the foreigner gives them an opening. 
I ate my ice angrily, barely replying when Mrs. Lawton 
asked me questions; Hugh had smiled, and Louisa had 
giggled when Mr. Lawton explained the joke. 

” I think it’s rather a shame,” said Edith’s gentle voice, 
but I did not warm to her. I hated them all. 

I had barely regained my composure when Mrs. Lawton 
rose; there was a scuffle of chairs, a rustling of skirts as 
the conversation suddenly ebbed away. As I thrust my 
chair aside I had the mortification of seeing Kent dart 
past me and open the door, next to which he stood with 
bent head while the ladies filed out. I was gloomily 
conscious that I, who was nearest to the door, should 
have done this, but the realisation did not prey upon me, 
for I was too interested in Kent’s sudden act of courtesy, 
following as it did upon his indifference to the women 
during dinner. But then door-opening is done. 

We drew together at the table ; we were already drinking 
port when the coffee came, and after the coffee we returned 
to port. The conversation was languid. Mr. Lawton 
asked me whether I was getting used to London; this 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


123 


question was beginning to be wearisome but I took it up. 

“ Yes,” I said. “ I don’t feel a stranger. Everything 
is so easy here, for you don’t have to know people long, 
and the fog is so amusing.” 

“ Oh, I say, that’s a bit thick,” said Kent. 

“ Kent ! Another one of those and I throw you out,” 
said Hugh. 

I went on, unaware of Kent’s detestable pun. I said 
that London in the fog was romantic, that the buildings 
were lifted up in it until they looked like Laputa floating 
in the clouds. 

“ You’re a poet,” said Mr. Lawton. “ This ’ll never do 
in Fenchurch Street, Cadoresse; you’ll be seeing romance 
in a bill of lading if you go on. Now a real Englishman 
like you ought to like nothing but hard fact, know facts, 
thousands of them ” 

“ Five thousand,” I cried. And after I had laughed 
I told Mr. Lawton about Mr. Hooper and Five Thousand 
Facts and Fancies. He listened to me, faintly smiling, 
no doubt because I had laughed; he did not seem to think 
Hooper so very odd. 

” Oh, well,” he summed up ; “ you don’t know whether 
his facts won’t come in handy one day.” 

I suggested that Hooper would be better off reading the 
paper and acquiring political views. This did not displease 
Mr. Lawton, and soon he was talking suavely of the Con- 
servative Government, to which he was opposed. At first 
he did not interest me much, and I listened with one ear 
to Kent and Hugh, who discussed with gravity the correct 
strapping of skis. What their difference of opinion was 
I do not know, but they seemed full of intensity. 

“ Of course, no one can tell how long this will go on,” 
said Mr. Lawton. ” A Government which comes in in the 
middle of a war may do anything it likes when the war’s 
over . . .” 

Hugh and Kent were still engrossed, disagreeing as to 
the respective merits of Norwegian and Swiss ski-running. 


124 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


but I did not hear the end of their debate, for Mr. Lawton 
had gripped my attention, 

“ This Education Bill, for instance. Well, I don’t mind 
religious education, far from it; but I don’t think it fair 
that the Nonconformists should share the cost of keeping 
up Church schools.” 

I asked for an explanation and received it. It was a 
clear, moderate exposition; without a gesture, without rais- 
ing his voice, Mr. Lawton figured for me the dual system 
of English education, the Church schools and the Board 
schools, made me understand the grievance of the 
Dissenters. 

“ So you see, that is all the trouble. I think it wrong 
that people should pay to have taught a creed they do 
not practise. And I can say it, I think, as I am a Church- 
man myself.” 

“What!” I cried. I could hardly believe him! How 
could a man who professed a creed grant that other creeds 
had rights? 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Lawton. “ I am a Churchman, and 
I am ready to pay for Church teaching, but I cannot see 
that Nonconformists should pay for it too. They are free 
to believe what they choose.” 

“Should, not your religion dominate? Why don’t you 
burn them ? ” 

“ We did, once upon a time,” said Mr. Lawton gently, 
“ but we’re wiser now. And we never burned them en- 
thusiastically. After all, a man may believe what he 
chooses.” 

“ I can hardly understand it.” 

“ You couldn’t, you’re French. I suppose you’re a 
Roman Catholic and ” 

“I’m an atheist,” I said, roughly. 

“ Oh ... of course, you’re free to believe what you 
choose (the fetish phrase!). There are lots of agnostics 
in this country.” 

True, in moderate England the atheists are all agnostics. 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


125 


Mr. Lawton continued mildly to dilate on religious free- 
dom. I was amazed; he seemed so ready to allow people 
to save their own souls ; he seemed so devoid of rancour. 
He was certain of nothing except that men should be free. 
I did not_, before I met him, understand that for the English 
there were several ways of reaching heaven. And he could 
discuss politics without excitement; he did not interrupt 
me when I opposed him, he did not anticipate my questions, 
or shout, or call anybody a traitor or a hireling. Hugh 
and Edward Kent heard us, no doubt, but did not seem 
to want to thrust their views upon us; they talked indo- 
lently now of the hotels of Vermala and Caux. 

“ Have some more port, Cadoresse,” said Mr. Lawton. 

I accepted, poured out another glassful, then returned 
the decanter to him. 

“ No, no — not that way — give it to me, Cadoresse.” 

There was a shout. The three men had burst into 
animated protests; they were almost excited. I looked at 
them, dumfounded, the decanter in my hand. Hugh had 
risen to his feet, while Kent, with outstretched hand, seemed 
taut with excitement. And there was a flush on Mr. Law- 
ton’s face. 

“Not that way, not that way,” he said in a loud voice. 

But what had I done, what had I done? All three 
explained together, interrupted one another, offered ex- 
planations, seemed ready to consult history books to seek 
out the origin of the tradition. 

“ The way of the sun, the way of the sun,” said Mr. 
Lawton; “give it to Kent.” 

As we rose to go to the drawing-room I was still trying 
to understand : politics, religion, these things could be 
viewed temperately, but there might be a riot if the port 
went from right to left instead of left to right. (I am 
not yet quite sure which way it does go.) And these are 
the sons of John Hampden! 

We lingered in the hall, looked at the hunting pictures. 
Kent asked Mr. Lawton where he had picked them up. 


126 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


while Hugh offered to show him the two new ones he had 
temporarily hung in the morning-room. I was impatient, 
for I wanted to join the ladies. But we lingered again 
on the stairs, and Hugh resumed his argument with Kent 
as to the Swiss hotels. At last we sauntered into the 
drawing-room, as if we were indifferent to the women. 
The three men certainly seemed careless; they smiled but 
faintly as each one moved towards an empty seat, idly sat 
down; it was cruelly significant that Muriel and Louisa 
Kent should both have in their eyes a gleam of interest 
for Kent and Hugh who so languidly came to them. And 
it was, perhaps, their languor partnered me for a while 
with Muriel, while Louisa succeeded in capturing Hugh. 
Mr. Lawton had deliberately chosen Edith, and soon I 
could hear Mrs. Lawton laugh at Kent’s jokes.^ Were they 
jokes? oi* was it some artificial quality? I exclaimed as 
I sat down, for the seat was very low. 

“ Did I leave a needle there? ” Muriel asked. 

“ Oh, no, but this chair is so low. But it’s quite com- 
fortable, very soft.” 

“ Don’t you have soft chairs in France? ” 

” No, hardly ever. Fine straight chairs — Louis XV, 
Louis XVI, Empire — you know what I mean.” 

” I don’t,” said Muriel. “ I’m awfully ignorant.” She 
laughed again, and I had to admire her dark hair, her 
white skin, her extraordinary triangular eyes. “ Tell me 
what a French drawing-room is like.” 

I described our graveyard. Empire sideboard, garnet 
footstools and all. 

“ It doesn’t sound comfortable,” said Muriel. “ Don’t 
you like this better ? ” She nodded towards the chintz- 
covered settee, now occupied by Kent and Mrs. Lawton. 
I examined the detail of the room and found it singular. 
With the exception of three mahogany chairs, Chippendale 
I believe, there was not a piece of furniture into which 
one could not sink. The settee looked like a swollen bed 
covered with pink-flowered chintz; Mr. Lawton half dis- 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


127 


appeared in a similarly covered grandfather, while the 
others lounged on padded tapestry. Under my feet I 
could feel a thick carpet; I could guess that the green 
velvet curtains were very soft. But I liked the room, the 
white walls, the water colours, the small gilt mirror over 
the mantelpiece, the flowered cushions. I liked it and yet 
felt shy of it. 

“ Yes,” I said, “ much better, but . . 

“ Bntr^ 

“ But ... a drawing-room, you know . . .” 

“ Oh, it’s hardly a drawing-room ; we sit in it half the 
day.” 

“Well, that’s it,” I blurted out; “it doesn’t feel ofiicial. 
Now if you had white and gold walls . . .” 

“And kept it neat.^ ” said Muriel, and smiled rather 
wickedly. 

I found my eyes straying to a little stool on which was 
a piece of unfinished fancy work, to the brass fender 
against which the evening papers had fallen in a pink and 
green heap. Muriel followed the direction of my looks, 
threw herself back in her chair; her slim white shoulders 
shook as she laughed. 

“ Mother,” she said in a loud voice. “ Mr. Cadoresse 
says we’re untidy. He says we leave the papers about 
and spill cigarette ash on the floor; he says ” 

“ I did not,” I cried in much distress. “ I assure you, 
Mrs. Lawton.” 

“ I’m sure you didn’t,” Mr. Lawton interposed. “ I 
never believe Muriel, and no more will you if you’re wise.” 

I recovered my ground, apologised for nothing, quite 
honestly reviled the French gilt chairs, our stiffness and 
stufliness. I warmed, I converted myself, I felt almost 
sure that a drawing-room need not be a holy. I tried 
not to be angry with Muriel, to remember that the English 
chaff, and succeeded, for she was charming now, though 
her eyes often roved towards Kent. 

“I am bored with the theatre,” said Kent; “it’s so 


128 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


uniform. If only the frivolous plays were deep and the 
serious plays were skittish I’d go and see one every night.” 

“Don’t you think Mr. Kent very clever.^” said Muriel. 

“ Very amusing/’ I said^ observing that this was the 
first personality I had heard that evening, and wondering 
what it implied. “What does he do.^” 

“ He’s a barrister. It’s a pity. I’m sure he would have 
preferred a fellowship at Cambridge.” 

I obtained a vague idea of the meaning of “ fellow,” 
gathered that Kent’s capacities were mainly academic. It 
was intolerable that this pretty girl should praise another 
man to me. So I spoke of my own career, of my courses 
in economics, political finance, international law. 

“ How very clever of you,” said Muriel, respectfully, 

“ You must have been a swat,” said Hugh. 

“ A swat? ” 

“ A mugger. A hard worker.” 

“ I suppose so. I was seventh of my year.” I pre- 
tended to be modest, but I happened to know this formula; 
I was very proud of the achievement. 

“Good for you,” said Kent; “when I was at Harrow 
I only wanted to be a blood.” 

“ Out of two hundred and eighty-five,” I added, without 
even feigned modesty. 

There was a short pause during which everybody seemed 
to be looking at me. Then Hugh laughed a little shrilly. 

“ Lord! I was sent down.” 

“ Hugh! How can you? ” 

There was a chorus of protests through which I gathered 
that Hugh had not been sent down, that he had come down 
with an adequate degree. I wondered why he should 
belittle himself. I did not do so. While Muriel continued 
to talk, of a play I think, a very distant memory came to 
me, a memory of a handsome middle-aged man who stood in 
a Bordeaux drawing-room in front of a small black-clad 
boy, and told him that in England people didn’t know any- 
thing. He, too, had belittled himself, and I threw side- 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 129 

glances at Mr. Lawton, the open-minded advocate of 
popular rights, wondered why he, too, hid his merits. 

Muriel refused a cigarette from Kent, with an osten- 
tatious “ Not in public.” 

“Do you smoke in private.^” I asked. 

“ Rather. Then father hasn’t got to know.” 

“ But he does know.^ ” 

“ Oh, of course, but he’s not supposed to.” 

To know and not to know. Well, I supposed it made 
life easier. Muriel vowed it did, pleaded for peace against 
clarity. I was ready enough to be convinced. 

“ And, of course, I always have my whisky and soda 
in bed.” 

I looked at her, shocked; I could not believe that she 
was serious, that her lovely lips were soiled with spirits 
and tobacco: but the inner Frenchman in me spoke: 

“ Yes, I know, English ladies all drink.” 

It was too late to call it back. My remark was retailed 
all round, and at intervals I was made the butt of the 
evening, asked if I drank to my fiancee only with mine 
eyes, begged by Muriel to drain a bumper of wassail with 
her in the scullery, told by Mrs. Lawton that she adored 
methylated spirits. 

I did not suffer as much as usual. I was getting hard- 
ened, I was beginning to understand the English; I was 
becoming ready to take as chaff a black eye or anything 
they fancied. 

Muriel sat down at the piano, played some Henry VIII 
dances, while Mrs. Lawton told me what plays I ought 
to see. Kent affected disdain of the music, assured me 
that “ blase men scored, for they expected so little that 
everything amused them.” I talked to Hugh, exclusively 
of myself and uninterrupted. It was getting late when, 
at last, Edith was pushed to the piano by her father, made 
in my honour to sing a French song. 

It was the pretty little lay of a conscript’s bride, tripping, 
sentimental, where village rhymed with courage, amour 


130 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


with retour. She was like a shepherdess of Dresden china. 
Her blue eyes were misty and as she sang her neck swelled 
towards me, a little as that of a slow-moving swan. I 
looked at Muriel, at her slim shoulders, her strange eyes. 


II 

I walked home slowly along Oxford Terrace towards 
Edgware Road. The dull light of the gas lamps was 
reflected in the black varnish of the wet pavement. As 
I walked, undisturbed, save when a cab splashed through 
the puddles, I tried in vain to relate these people to one 
another, to analyse them and of their elements to make 
a whole. They were all different, as half a dozen French 
people would have been different, and yet had that some- 
thing common for which the French group would have 
had a national equivalent; Kent’s bland brilliance, Hugh’s 
calm, the frankness and liberalism of Lawton . . . dis- 
cords, and yet over all, a concordance of behaviour, man- 
ners, therefore morals. The men were linked to the 
women, to the garrulous and discreet Mrs. Lawton, to shy 
Edith, to gay, audacious Muriel. 

I thought most of the things I could not see, of their 
reticences. Yes, that was the link: they all held back. 

At the corner of a side street I stopped to let a four- 
whee'ler pass. The old driver, who looked in the night 
like a bundle of rugs, pulled up in front of me. 

“ Got a light, mister ? ” 

I handed him my matchbox, and as he lit his pipe, 
observed : 

“It has been raining, has it not?” 

“ Mum,” he grumbled, “ yes. Not much in it for me. 
Ain’t a night for old ladies.” 

I made a polite sound. The old cabman puffed at his 
pipe, declared that times weren’t what they had been, 
wondered what they would be soon. 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 131 

“ I suppose you’re going home/’ I said, as he did not 
whip up.” 

“ Shouldn’t be hanging about if I wasn’t. Been out 
since ten this morning.” 

He paused. Then: “Well, mustn’t keep the missus 
waiting, or she’ll have the poker ready for me.” He 
clucked, shook the reins, and as the old horse leisurely 
strained at the harness, added humorously, “No, it 
wouldn’t do ; mustn’t let the turtle soup get cold.” 

He, too, was an Englishman. But was he? And as I 
thought of the old cabman I felt less certain of his nation- 
ality. Heat and cold, money, food, a wife, those were 
his thoughts; was there anything to show that his moral 
outlook, his standard of art, his hopes for a future of 
ease and peace, differed from those of any cabman who at 
that time sat on his box in Bordeaux, Naples or Berlin? 
Those classes are all alike, can know nothing but the 
primitive: they have no time; they must eat, love, die, 
and that is a big business. Some may be gay and others 
dour, some bait the bull in the plaza and others back cocks 
for a wager, but the varnish upon their souls is very thin. 
And those others, the intellectuals, the artists, they are 
linked by the fineness of mental things as the lower folk 
are linked by the material; it is a Swinburne for a Baude- 
laire, a Spinoza for a Descartes, a Dostoievsky for a 
Stendhal. They, too, are alike, think alike. 

Between the highest and the lowest lies the nation. 
The nation is made up of those who have leisure and 
money enough to think not too much of material things, 
and yet no spirit to transcend these. The nation lies 
between the plebeian and the intellectual patrician. As 
I walked away towards the Edgware Road, where the poor 
were making merry in as cheap and rough a way as they 
do in Belleville, I knew that behind me, in Lancaster Gate 
and its vassal streets, was the heart of England, beating 
very regularly, very slowly and for all time. 


132 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


III 

In the months that followed I found that the Lawtons 
bred in Maud a feeling of disquiet. She took in them an 
interest which she did not share with the other inhabitants 
of the house who, I soon discovered, viewed my new inti- 
macy with satisfaction. One evening Mrs. Hooper stood 
at the foot of the stairs, w’atching me while I teased my 
tie into a proper set in front of the hallstand mirror. 

“ You won’t make too much noise when you come in, 
will you.^” she said, confidentially, for familiarity had 
grown a little between us. 

“No,” I promised; “besides, I shall not be late. I’m 
going to Mrs. Lawton’s.” 

“Ah!” Mrs. Hooper paused; curbed by her manners, 
she repressed a question and released a comment. I like 
to see a gentleman in evening clothes, Mr. Cadoresse.” 

“ Yes,” I said; “ besides, one has to wear them.” 

“ Of course, of course, when there’s company. We’re 
quite homely here, but it’s different at Mr. Lawton’s.” 

I pondered for a moment on the curious sex-difference 
which made me think of Lancaster Gate as “ Mrs. 
Lawton’s,” while Mrs. Hooper saw it as “ Mr. Lawton’s ” ; 
then: 

“ They always dress, I think, for I’ve been there when 
they were alone.” 

“ Quite right too. So shall we . . . when our ship 
comes home.” 

She smiled rather sadly and I thought of her and her 
snobbish innocence, of the gradations, the people who 
didn’t wash before food, those who washed, those who 
“changed,” the great who “dressed.” The Royal Family 
on the top — not that it had anything to do with clothes, 
but whatever it was Mrs. Hooper classified, the Royal 
Family somehow always came to the top. 

“ I used to think I’d like it too, when I first married,” 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


133 


she said, reflectively; “but Mr. Hooper thought in our 
position it wouldn’t look well. Of course,” she hurriedly 
remarked, “ it’s different for young gentlemen.” 

She threw me a glance of approval, rather a fond glance, 
wliich made me wonder whether Mrs. Hooper regretted 
that she had no son, whether she would have exchanged 
Lulu for me; yet she would not have parted with Maud, 
the artist, the infant prodigy. Maud was the centre of 
the house. 

I had begun to understand Maud, her emptiness and 
the nature of her charm; very reluctantly I was coming 
to see that she would resist me to the end, not because 
she had anything to protect, but because she had nothing 
to give. Our conversations were seldom of love, infallible 
sign that there was no love; we spoke (I by compulsion) 
of the new musical comedy, of the new star on the halls, 
of record railway runs, the cost of London buildings. We 
also spoke a good deal of the Lawtons, or rather Maud 
questioned me as to their habits. She had none of the 
reserve I chose to think English. 

“ I ’spect they’re pretty oofy.^ Does she have a car- 
riage? No footman? Well, I don’t think much of that, 
having to get out and ring the bell herself. How much 
do you think they’ve got a year ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ What’s the good of your being in the business if you 
don’t know? Ten thousand?” 

“ I shouldn’t think so much.” 

“ Five, then? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ Well, there’s not much in it unless it’s five thousand. 
What’s the rent of the house ? ” 

We were walking in the Park that Saturday afternoon, 
and as I had just arrived from the City it was still before 
two. Maud, intent on the Lawton rental, insisted on calling 
on a house agent and pretending to want a house in* Lan- 
caster Gate. He looked at us with suspicion, as we did 


134 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


not seem the sort of young couple likely to set up there, 
but opened his book, being too old in his trade to feel 
things keenly, 

“ I can offer 99 a. Two hundred and fifty a year/’ he 
said, gloomily. 

Maud had the audacity to say that was just a little 
too much. We left with an order to view a mere hundred 
and forty pounder in Connaught Square. We said we 
would let him know. The estate agent smiled cheerlessly 
and did not open the door for us; he knew life. 

The episode w^as vulgar, and a bitterness crept into my 
reward, which consisted in viewing the house in Con- 
naught Square; Maud viewed it magnificently. 

“Why is there no electric light ” she asked fiercely of 
the haggard caretaker, 

“ I couldn’t say. Miss, P’raps Marstons ” 

“ Pooh ! Marstons don’t know anything. And that 
panel’s cracked.” 

Maud examined the whole house, scowling at the care- 
taker, and, behind her back, grinning at me. At last I 
entered into the joke. By Maud’s instruction I loudly 
addressed her as Lady Grace. The caretaker collapsed 
completely; her earlier remarks were replaced by half 
inaudible “ Yes, your Ladyships ” and “ No, your Lady- 
ships.” 

“There aren’t enough cupboards,” said Maud; then, 
angrily : “ Where do you suppose the second housemaid 
will keep the brooms ? ” 

The caretaker’s attitude intimated that she didn’t know 
what a second housemaid was. Maud pranced and fumed, 
asked me to remember Ascot, Hurlingham and (a slip) 
the Tivoli; she abused the bedrooms, swore her maid 
wouldn’t stand the second floor back, declared that her 
“ husband ” must have a bath fitted in his dressing-room. ^ 
While the caretaker shuffled to the basement to fetch a 
candle, so that Maud could inspect the inside of a hanging 
cupboard, we both laughed, and I loved her for her gay 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


135 


insolence, her cheek, and I kissed her, still laughing, while 
the old woman slowly climbed the stairs. 

But not all our talks were enlivened by such pranks. 
Often Maud commented bitterly on Lawtoniana. 

“ They’re only a set of prigs. There they are, all over 
starch and you’d think the butter wouldn’t melt, talking 
about Eton and the different kinds of port, and thinking 
all the time of us. Mother Tinman’s little girls who’ll be 
at the Gaiety in another two years. I know the sort.” 

Not far wrong as an impression. But could it be that 
the Hugh Lawtons of London nursed far-back thoughts 
of the Mauds .f* ” 

“ See ’em hanging about when we come out,” Maud 
summed up. “ But I’m not taking any. No fear.” 

For Maud the “toffs” were a race apart, whom she 
hated and admired because she knew that, in this land of 
caste, she would not be accepted of them save by chance 
of marriage. Though English, she understood them little 
better than I did, for she knew nothing but their external 
habits, the addresses of their tailors, the restaurants and 
clubs they frequented, the location of their winter and 
summer pleasures. She admired their good looks and 
perfect clothes, the easy, cold manners which she angrily 
affected to despise. 

“ I’ll be the Honourable Mrs. before I’ve done,” she 
confided to me one day ; “ anybody could do it now that 
Betty Bell has got the old earl.” 

Then she wmuld recite the list of the latest prizes cap- 
tured by the privateers of the stage, and towards the stage 
her talk would drift. Hers was a double instinct: she 
wanted social position because she would like to have it 
to humiliate her old associates, to rise, and she probably 
nursed a dim equivalent of lex talionis. To marry a “ toff ” 
would be social revenge. When she said, “ Ain’t I good 
enough ? ” she spoke with the voice of all the girls of her 
class whom the aristocrat has preyed on, and almost said, 
“ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” I could not 


136 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


protest, for I could not offer marriage; I could only say: 

“ But, darling, I love you,” and she, “ You can tell the 
tale. Froggy.” She was sure that the Lawton girls made 
up their faces, and she was darkly jealous of the admira- 
tion she had convicted me of feeling for Muriel and her 
triangular eyes. 

“You look out,” she said; “triangular you call it, as 
if a girl ever did have an eye like that. Shape of a danger 
signal, anyhow, so you look out.” 

Then she would scoff at my sincere protests that she 
was much prettier, repel my advances, later woo me 
back and, when successful, repulse me again. She feared 
Muriel, for she had to confess she “ sounded all right,” 
but laid no stress on Edith. She knew the sort: been sent 
to the cleaners too often, like Lulu, and got all the colour 
washed out. 

Maud annoyed me when she attacked the Lawton girls. 
I was not in love with either, but they were apart from 
Maud as from me, and when she sneered at their “ quite 
the lady ” manners I felt like a devout Catholic who 
sees an irreverent tourist try to enter a mosque with his 
boots on. 


IV 

Maud had matter for her questions. As the months 
passed and the English summer shyly sidled into the coun- 
try, I went more often to the Lawtons, on Sunday after- 
noons, on Mrs. Lawton’s at-home day, not then abolished 
by fashion, a little to the houses of their friends. For I 
was still a curiosity and, as such, well received. 

“ One never knows what you’ll say next,” said Mrs. 
Raleigh, the comfortable wife of Colonel Raleigh. “ When 
you begin to talk, Mr. Cadoresse, I’m always afraid that 
it’s going to be quite dreadful.” 

“Do you mind it’s being dreadful.^” I asked, auda- 
ciously, for I resisted Mrs. Raleigh no more than I resisted 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


137 


any other woman. I must, loving them all, suggest to all 
women that I love them. Audacity is the path to love. 

“ Well . . . no,” said Mrs. Raleigh, “ perhaps I don’t. 
It’s refreshing to hear you talk of the latest society 
divorce as if it were an everyday sort of affair, but you 
oughtn’t to.” 

“Why?” 

“ Oh, how can I tell you . . . we don’t do it. Of 
course, we know these things happen, but ” 

“ But you think they only happen in the papers ? ” 

“ You’re too sharp for me, Mr. Cadoresse,” said Mrs. 
Raleigh, with a mock sigh. She leaned back in her chair, 
smiling at me with her very good teeth; she was forty-five, 
but her wavy brown hair, her fine skin and bright blue 
eyes were still attractive. If only she had worn proper 
stays ! But those Englishwomen are always unconsciously 
insuring against temptation. 

“ Still,” she added, “ you oughtn’t to talk like that. It’s 
silly of you to say we think those things only happen in 
the papers. We know all about them, but we don’t think 
it necessary to discuss them; there are lots of things we 
don’t discuss ” 

“For instance? ” 

“If you think you’re going to entrap me into discussing 
things with you by telling you which are the ones I won’t 
discuss, you’re wrong, Mr. Cadoresse; I’m not to be caught 
like that. No, there just are things we don’t discuss pub- 
licly — we don’t see why we should; they’re quite unneces- 
sary. Why should we trouble about the unpleasant things ? 
They do none of us any good and they may do harm, while 
there are so many pleasant ones.” 

My conversations with Mrs. Raleigh generally ended in 
this way. She was not narrow, she was almost racy 
sometimes, but there were things she liked to have illusions 
about. This led me to talk seriously to her, which generally 
made her laugh and say, “ Oh, of course, you’re a French- 
man, you can’t understand.” That phrase always exas- 


1S8 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


perated me. I didn’t want to be a Frenchman^ so I tried 
to understand; it was not easy, even with faith to help me. 
On those occasions I generally lost my head and shouted. 
If Colonel Raleigh and Gladys were present I made myself 
rather ridiculous, for my careful pronunciation failed me. 
On one occasion Colonel Raleigh tactfully intervened and 
tried to change the subject by making me talk of the army; 
he asked me whether I still had friends there, and in my 
excitement I managed to tell him that I knew “ a buggler 
at Tours, in a regiment of dragons.” 

Colonel Raleigh left the room, declaring that if he stayed 
his heart would give way, while Mrs. Raleigh and Gladys 
apologised. But I was quite unnerved, and that was the 
day I referred to the “ tablecarpet.” They did not chaff 
me mercilessly, and indeed Gladys, whose precise, pale face 
and quiet manner had designed her for a schoolmistress, 
promised to drill me in the mysteries of the words which 
end in “ ough.” I think they liked my absurdity, the 
occasional incongruity of my frock-coats and brown boots, 
my unexpected accents and the general strangeness of my 
point of view. And yet I did not want to be strange; 
I had done everything I could to be an Englishman; I 
knew London well, had even explored several suburbs; I 
had learned to like English beer, to open the door for a 
lady, to say that Fiona (the Lawtons’ Scotch terrier) 
ought to be shown at Cruft’s. I had even begged a 
morning to see the Boat Race, which was very dull, 
and had taken part in Boat Race Night, which was very 
mild. 

I was an oddity, outside them. “ You are not one of 
us,” said every lineament of Colonel Raleigh. I admired 
the old soldier, knew the tale of the fort he had held near 
Chitral, knew that he could not cheat at cards, or give 
a woman away, or wear the wrong hat: but I could not 
connect him with my own old colonel, who was fat, took 
snuff, and whose amorous adventures were the talk of our 
regiment. Colonel Raleigh was not very human, or rather 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 139 

he was no longer human. He was an officer and a 
gentleman. 

There were others, too: Bessie Surtees, dark and 
madonna-like, except when she was in Switzerland and 
purposely fell into the snow when a curate or a school- 
master was near enough to pick her up. And Dicky Bell, 
tall, upright, bird-like, who was ashamed of his grammar 
school, and Archie Neville, who dressed on nothing a year. 
They whirled about me, all of them, amiable, dignified, 
and well-washed, asking me general questions about French 
customs and tolerating the answers, revealing themselves 
but slowly and reluctantly. Chaos still reigned in my 
mind. 

It was many months before I knew that Bessie Surtees 
was trying to make me propose to her because this was 
one of her habits, and that she had a brother in the army 
for whose sake her father had mortgaged his life insurance. 
They refused themselves, and even Dicky Bell, who talked, 
gave me little more than a hint of severely regulated affairs 
of the heart. They wanted to talk of theatres, games, 
politics (a little), France, but not of themselves and me. 

And yet I loved them, because, in their own word, 
they were “ decent.” I might inwardly rage and long 
to ask questions, though I knew they would evade them, 
but I knew that Bessie Surtees never told a lie, while 
Dicky Bell spent half his evenings drilling boys at a settle- 
ment for the fun of the thing. And Archie Neville, who 
was not sure that twenty-five francs went to the pound, 
was poor because he had shouldered a dead father’s debts. 
Simple and simply fine, they were hard to themselves, these 
Romans. 

These people made me think of their own houses, houses 
of the Queen’s Gate type. No man can live in those houses 
unless he has five thousand a year, and yet no man gilds 
his door, which he could well afford to do. They take it 
coolly, all of them, and never talk about it. That sort of 
thing gives one the measure of the English quality. 


140 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


V 

Into the midst of England fell, every week, a letter 
from my mother, a letter she wrote every Friday and will 
write every Friday until one of us dies. It was written 
in the fine sloping hand the French call English and the 
English Italian, with violet ink on cheap white paper. She 
always filled four pages, no more, no less, as if she kept 
on those shelves which I like to put up in her brain, a 
diary marked “ News for Lucien,” and every week took 
out just enough notes to make up my ration. Her letters 
followed a settled plan: 1. Hopes that my health was 
good. 2. Her health and Jeanne’s. 3. Hopes that I was 
doing well in business, comments and warnings (against 
Socialism, answering back and loud clothes). 4. Miscel- 
laneous. On New Year’s Day and my Saint’s day the 
four sections were reduced owing to pressure on space, 
for congratulations were included. At Easter I received 
a flaming heart, or chromolithographed angels. On the 
anniversary of my father’s death came the yearly reference 
to him, a hope that all was well with his soul, and this 
formula: “ I shall go and lay flowers upon his grave 
to-morrow. As this is the month of May, the flowers are 
beautiful.” 

Dear mother, I know you bargain with the flower seller 
for those flowers, try to make her abate her price by 
telling her that they are for the dead; you loved my father 
economically, but you loved him dutifully, for he was your 
husband and could not do quite wrong, as you love me 
cautiously, for I am your son and cannot do quite right. 
Your letters are written in another planet, where people 
do extraordinary things, where Jeanne goes up for her 
Brevet Elementaire, where the vine has bad years and 
M. de Pouvonac stands as a Catholic Republican for the 
Bordeaux Town Council. In those days you were incredibly 
remote by the side of this English knowledge I had so 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


141 


greedily been sucking in; I began to see you and the 
things that surrounded you as toys with which little foreign 
children played. For the English held me by maintaining 
me in the middle of their whirlpool. Their faces flash 
past me as I think of them, and I cannot remember where 
I saw them, these people; some of them are dead, some 
gone, some merely older and friendly; one of them will 
endure for ever, and for ever beautiful and young. Among 
them is even the black face of a dog. It is the face of 
Fiona, the Aberdeen, whom I saw for the first time as she 
sat on the mat outside the dining-room door when I entered 
the house of the Lawtons. As I took off my coat she 
surveyed me with unemotional calm, as befitted her staid 
portliness; she winked round brown eyes at me from under 
her shaggy eyebrows; she did not growl, or stand up; she 
moved so little as she watched me that the dull sheen 
on her coat seemed fixed. Fiona was Scotch, therefore 
more closely allied to the true English than the soft people 
of the South. She seldom hurried; when she wanted a 
door opened she scratched it with indomitable obstinacy; 
if she required sugar she sat up and monotonously waved 
her front paws. She never barked except for a purpose. 
She never loved anybody nor hated anybody, but she 
could show her liking by a small wriggle of her twisted 
tail. Amiable, self-centred, resolute, limited, brave enough 
to fight three cats together, Fiona was an English dog. 
Other scenes and people too, dinner-parties, Sunday 
afternoon calls, Saturdays at Ranelagh, the River, all 
splotched with white, and pink, and blue, the Strangers’ 
Gallery, and restaurants and English taverns, the horse 
guards, the meet of the Four-In-Hand Club, the inside of 
the Stock Exchange (a dangerous expedition), the ritual 
fish lunch at Simpson’s — these things rise up and all blur 
together into chaotic early impressions of slow, steady men, 
youths with all the purpose of their lives in their strong 
arms and legs, and girls with lily-petal skins. I love them; 
J like to think of them because they can live without care 


142 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


for age or fate, because for them life is so like cricket that 
an ugly deed is “ not cricket.” Cricket ! I was bent on 
being English and mastered the rules of the game; I grew 
so enthusiastic that I ran out of the office on certain after- 
noons to buy a paper and see what was the state of the 
score at Lord’s. I watched football matches, sagely pre- 
ferred Rugby to Association (at the beginning; later I 
thought more of soccer than rugger). I found with melan- 
choly that I was too old to take up the game, was by Muriel 
tactfully directed towards tennis. 

One tennis-party, a very early one, I remember best. 
The Lawtons and the Raleighs belonged to a club near 
Hounslow, where they played rather ostentatiously on 
Sundays. They rejoiced in the sin until a little guilt crept 
into their pleasure. Admitted as a guest, I figure myself, 
looking very dark in my white garments, collarless, unfor- 
tunately sashed in blue silk. Partnered by Muriel, I played 
Hugh and Gladys Raleigh, rather badly. I think Hugh 
and I were a study in contrasts, for he seemed slow, almost 
lazy, struck swift and very low balls towards the bottom 
of the court, while I leapt into the air, struck wildly and 
savagely, aiming straight at Hugh’s feet or at Gladys’s 
left. I am sure I would have fouled if one could foul 
at tennis, for I wanted to win, to extract admiration from 
the little crowd. Colonel and Mrs. Raleigh, Edith, Mrs. 
Lawton, who seemed amused by the performance. With 
them was a girl I have never seen again, a Miss Fox-Kerr. 

But the game was going against us. Having led off by 
winning my service and Gladys’s we began to lose ground, 
were beaten four times in succession. Muriel ran in vain, 
begging me at times not to hit all the balls into the neigh- 
bours’ court. I recovered a little, made a few lucky shots, 
looking every time towards the spectators to see whether 
I was watched. I felt angry because the relaxed look on 
Miss Fox-Kerr’s long face told me that her attention was 
fleeting. But she was watching me all the same, for she 
smiled, said something to Edith which made her giggle. 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


143 


My wounded pride translated itself into wilder hitting, 
while Hugh’s long arm worked like a machine. At last 
came the crucial ball of the last game, a swift return from 
Hugh. ... I heard a cry of “ Back! ” from Muriel. . . . 
I struck, heard the sharp “ splack ” of the ball against the 
net ribbon. I also heard a contemptuous “ Pff ” come from 
Miss Fox-Kerr, saw her lips purse up. I said nothing in 
reply to the cry of “ Game and,” for my soul was full 
of hatred, I could not trust myself to speak in presence of 
this girl. I have learned to be a sportsman now, to take 
my beatings and my chaff, to win without strutting, but I 
think I hate her still, this dim girl, before whom I was 
a fool, who knew I was a fool and did not conceal it. 
She is in my little museum, by the side of Chaverac who 
saw me exposed as a coward. 

And all goes fleeting; Edith, who in those days appeared 
only three or four times a year when the Brussels finishing 
school made holiday; Muriel, with whom I had a timid 
flirtation, who good-humouredly accepted innocent kisses 
when Edward Kent’s superior fascination palled on her. 
Maud even, that continual irritant, is less vivid, for her 
attractiveness wore a little thin as I grew accustomed to 
the exasperation her presence and her inaccessibility 
provoked in me. Besides, a new feeling was born in me, 
a curious feeling towards women which had no roots in 
my Latin temperament. Very slowly I had ceased to look 
upon women as toys; England was beginning my senti- 
mental education. I had been prepared for my evolution 
by Barker’s lecture on good women and bad, by his 
analogous but less strict division of men into good and 
bad. He had not shaken me at the moment, but he had 
sown in my mind the seed of a new flower called purity, 
which blooms more readily under the pale English sky 
than in our own fierce sun. He did not influence my con- 
duct, but he made it possible for my conduct to change ; 
I was ready to modify my standards, then, when Hugh 
suddenly opened to me. 


144 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


We sometimes, in search of exercise, walked westwards 
from Fenchurch Street to Marble Arch, an incongruous 
and not unfriendly couple. I liked Hugh, and though we 
never had much to say to each other when we had ex- 
hausted skysigns, the play, and the contents of the evening 
paper, it pleased me to walk with this handsome figure. 
One evening, as we jostled through the press in Cheapside, 
I broke off in a sentence to exchange smiles with a young 
girl as she passed us; I even turned to look back at her: 
it was harmless, even from the English point of view, 
for all I wanted was to gratify my own vanity, to see 
whether she, too, looked back. But, after this, I had for 
some minutes the conversation to myself ; Hugh did not 
say a word until we reached Holborn, when he suddenly 
interrupted my comments on The Chinese Honeymoon. 

“ Look here, Cadoresse,” he said, haltingly; “ you know, 
you oughtn’t to do that.” 

“ Do what? ” 

“ Look at girls in the street. I wish you wouldn’t.” 

I threw him a quick glance. The admonition had dis- 
pleased me, but the second sentence had surprised and 
moved me a little, for Hugh had never before connected 
himself with me, and now he was trying to express per- 
sonal interest, to drag himself out of his unemotional 
Englishness. 

“Why?” I asked, gently. 

“ It’s not done. But it’s not that only,” he added, hur- 
riedly, as if dimly aware that this reason was not enough; 
“ it’s not what a decent sort of chap does. You see, that 
kind of thing’s rather cheap; if you get snubbed you feel 
very small, and if you don’t, well, you ought to.” 

“ But how is one to know people one wants to if one 
can’t get introduced? ” 

“ Oh, you know I don’t mean that,” said Hugh, rather 
acidly. “ Those aren’t the people you might get intro- 
duced to; I don’t set up for a saint, but a man’s got to 
keep away as much as he can from that sort of thing. He 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


145 


wants to forget all about it, keep his head clear for the 
things that matter. He can’t be big unless he’s straight.” 

“ Galahad,” I said, ironically. 

“Who’s Galahad?” 

“ A man in a book.” Hugh was Galahad sans le savoir, 
then. “ Never mind, go on.” 

“ Oh, I’m not going in for pi-jaw, but believe me, 
Cadoresse, I’m right and you’re wrong, even if you are 
cleverer than me.” 

I protested, though I did think myself cleverer than this 
fine fellow, whose clear blue eyes seldom held the anima- 
tion of an idea. But he did not pursue this side issue, for 
he apparently knew that he was not very clever and 
accepted the fact without demur, while he was bent on 
reforming me. 

“ That sort of thing,” he began again after some minutes 
of silence, during which I waited anxiously for what he 
would say ; “ it’s all right for . . . well, all sorts of people 
. . . the fellows at the office. . . . They do that sort of 
thing on the pier at Hastings ... by the bandstand, all 
that. But somehow a- fellow like you can’t. Of course, 
I know you’re French and it makes a difference, but you’re 
in England and you’ve got to choose . . 

We walked along Oxford Street and I said very little 
while he floundered, trying to say what he thought, 
drawing back because he was afraid of preaching, and 
sometimes quite unable to express himself because he so 
seldom did express an idea. But his lecture came down to 

THE CREED OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL BOY 

“ I believe in the gentlemen of England. I be- 
lieve that I must shave every morning and every 
morning take a bath, have my clothes made to order, 
in such wise that no man shall look at them twice. 

I believe in the Church, the Army, the Navy, the 
Law, and faithfully hold it to be my duty to main- 


146 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


tain myself in my caste if Fate has called me to a 
walk in life other than these. I believe that I must 
have a decent club. I believe that I must not 
drink to excess, nor be a teetotaller. I believe in 
my father’s politics. I believe that I must not tell 
lies, nor cheat at cards, nor apply the letter of the 
law in games. I believe that I must perjure myself 
to save a woman’s reputation, even if she has none, 
respect all women, except those who are not respect- 
able, for they are outlawed; I believe that I must 
hold my passions in check, feel shame when they 
master me and yield only in secret, because I am 
a gentleman of England. And, above all, that which 
I believe I must never tell.” 

It moved me very much to hear Hugh telling, violating 
for my sake the canons of his reserve, compelling himself 
to interfere, because it was “ the straight thing,” “ the 
handsome thing.” When he had done I was silent for a 
long time, so long that we did not exchange a word until 
we reached Marble Arch, where our roads diverged. Then 
Hugh suddenly spoke again: 

“ You know ... I don’t want you to think . . . well, 
I say all that sort of thing, and you needn’t believe it if 
you don’t want to . . . perhaps I’m wrong. I can’t be 
sure of being right, only I’ve always taken all that for 
granted ... so I don’t want you to feel . . . hurt . . . 
or anything . . 

I shook hands with him, hard. 

“ That’s all right, Lawton ; I understand. It’s very good 
of you; I feel . . 

“ Good-night, good-night,” he said, hurriedly, and 
walked away from me. 

He could not bear my thanks, for they made him see 
that he had “ given himself away ” ; he disliked the idea 
of preaching, disliked the half-apology his heart had dic- 
tated, disliked my quick, over-emotional response. He 


THE HEART OF ENGLAND 


147 


walked away, very fast, as if he were escaping from some 
menace. Perhaps he was afraid that I was going to kiss 
him outside the Tube Station. Unaccountably, much of his 
spirit entered into me; the samurai began in my heart to 
struggle with the voluptuary ; I saw more grace, less seduc- 
tion, I saw grounds for respect, and self-respect, decencies, 
knightlinesses, all kinds of lofty but appealing fetishes. 
The samurai did not triumph, and has not yet triumphed, 
perhaps, but he fought hard for the dignity of my soul; 
he was often beaten, on those nights when I paced my 
little room, avoiding the sickening sight of “ In the Garden 
of Eden ” and “ The Jubilee Procession,” on others when 
a sudden gentleness came over Maud and she was all allure. 

But I tried, for you can be a Frenchman and just be 
a Frenchman, a German, and that is enough; but what’s 
the good of being an Englishman unless you can be an 
English gentleman too? 














PART II 


0 


CHAPTER I 


EDITH LAWTON 
I 

Suddenly I became aware of Edith. I had been in 
England just two years. Across the dissolving view of 
my impressions she had flitted from time to time, a fair, 
gracious little figure. Flitted! Hardly; while bolder 
actors held the stage she had stood in the wings, watching 
the play, shyly peeping from behind the scenery, showing 
in the shadow her pale golden head, her tender blue eyes. 
And if ever I looked at the figure it blushed, soon with- 
drew, as a dryad might shrink away from the gaze of a 
satyr. 

I had seen her only during the short holidays of the 
Belgian school, at that first dinner, then again at the tennis 
party, some afternoons at her mother’s house, not ten times 
in all. She had never mattered; she had been agreeable, 
like the white walls and the flowered cushions of the 
drawing-room; she had talked to me a little more readily 
after the tennis-party, for she had resented the contemptu- 
ous “ Pff ” with which Miss Fox-Kerr branded me. I knew 
this, for we had exchanged a few words later in the 
afternoon. 

“ I’m sorry I play badly,” I said, gloomily watching 
Miss Fox-Kerr’s overhand serve. I sat, mortified and 
hunched-up in my blazer, the colours of which I was not 
entitled to use. 

“You don’t play badly,” said Edith; “you only want 
practice.” 

“No doubt,” I replied. I was curt, for that was not the 
remark I wanted. 


151 


152 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ You play quite as well as Miss Fox-Kerr, anyhow/" 

I threw Edith a side-glance. Why had she picked out 
the girl who had insulted me.^ But Edith’s reply to my 
next sentence made her attitude clear. 

“ She does not seem to think so/’ I suggested. 

There was a pause. Then Edith said, inconsequently : 
“ I think it’s rather a shame.” I made no comment, but 
I understood her; I looked at the slim white fingers that 
grasped the racket, thought I should like to kiss them, to 
kiss them not so much because I wanted to kiss them, as 
because such a gesture would express my gratitude. But 
one does not in public kiss the hands of shy English 
girls; I said nothing, because I should have said something 
emotional, and I knew already that this was not done. But 
when Edith returned to Brussels, and whenever she came 
back, I did not forget. Now and then, when I sat in my 
room alone, Hecate sent me a graceful empusa. The ghost 
always said the same thing: “ It’s rather a shame.” 

I must not exaggerate: I did not so very often think 
of Edith while she was at school, for the claims of new 
common things, of England, of my business, of Maud, of 
others, of Muriel, tended to fill my mind. My relation to 
Muriel was peculiar, for the girl did not set out to fascinate 
me, being more drawn towards Edward Kent and, in his 
absence, to others amongst whom I did not greatly count. 
Yet she was friendly, and, while treating me as a friend, 
treated me as a man: that is, as a creature susceptible of 
becoming a lover. She did not admit me as a lover, but 
she did not consider it impossible I might become one, 
for she was light enough and, so far, untouched enough 
by love to make no emphatic distinctions between men. 
Ours was a comradeship, an amitie amoureuse. 

“Hello! what’s to-day’s tie.^ Valenciennes? Point 
d’ Alen9on ? ” 

“ It isn’t lace,” I said, roughly. 

“ It looks rather like it. Now, Mr. Cadoresse, if I were 
you I’d go in for Irish; it’s more solid, more manly.” 


EDITH LAWTON 


153 


“ You know quite well I never wore a lace tie. A little 
insertion 

“ I’ll be fair. It isn’t lace to-day. It’s more like the 
Mediterranean.” 

” Do you want me to wear black? ” 

** No, of course not.” Muriel grew serious, ceased to 
chaff me. ” Don’t be obstinate ; go to any place you like 
in Jermyn Street and ask them to sell you the tie they’ve 
sold most of during the past month, and you’ll be all 
right.” 

It was Muriel, in her kindliness, anglicised my clothes 
as soon as she became friendly enough to criticise me to 
my face. She also gravely taught me the things to do. 

” You’ve got to be smart,” she said. “ A man’s got 
no right not to be smart. It’s the only way he has of 
looking pretty. Now he mustn’t look like a mute, and 
he mustn’t overdo it. You did overdo it with that suit of 
yours, the teddy-bear, Hugh called it ” 

“ Well, I saw it in the window,” I said, flushing. 

” If a suit is exposed for sale, the buyer is exposed to 
ridicule.” 

“ I will bet that sentence is one of Kent’s.” 

“ What if it is ? ” Muriel threw me a rather spiteful 
glance, then relented, not displeased by my suggestion that 
Kent condescended to be brilliant for her sake. ” It’s true. 
Now listen, Mr. Cadoresse. . . .” 

I owe a great deal of my education to Muriel; she was 
fundamentally dashing; she classed people by their voices, 
names and places of residence. In her own words, ” she 
had no use for people whose fare to the City was over 
threepence”; she did not despise these people: she merely 
ignored them. It was Muriel explained to me that Earl’s 
Court wasn’t right, but that the Welcome Club was, that 
I was not to go to the seaside on Sunday League trips, 
that I must either pay my shilling for tea in Bond Street 
or go without, that I had better have no club than join 
one which had no waiting list. 


154 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


And don’t show off/’ she said. “ It isn’t done. You 
mustn’t tell people how well you did at school, or what a 
lady-killer you are, or that you can pull twenty miles 
without feeling it.” 

“ Well, I can,” I said, sulkily, as I thought of a wonder- 
ful Sunday with Maud between Hampton Court and 
Staines. 

“ There you go again. Don’t say it.” 

“ I suppose you think I’m a bounder.” 

“If I did, I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t talk to 
you.” 

I unbent. I even took her hand, told her she was very 
sweet to me, tried to kiss her ; she resisted me at first, but 
soon surrendered, with a serene indifference which ought 
to have told me she valued me no more than the others. 
Like most English girls Muriel did not care very much 
whether one man or another made advances to her; if she 
invited his attentions it was to satisfy her vanity. She 
liked me, was amused by my Frenchness, the uncertain 
temper she so often had to soothe; she found an obscure 
maternal pleasure in training me. She was not in love 
with me, and I could not fall in love with her because I 
knew she did not care. 

Thus my heart was free when Edith returned for good. 
This was in October. I had not seen her for six months, 
for the Lawtons had settled at Ostend in August, and she 
suddenly struck me as new. She was eighteen and had 
grown a good deal; this I judged early, for I did not know 
I would find her as I entered the drawing-room on a 
Sunday afternoon, when the air was still warm and 
glowing. She stood at the open window, and had evi- 
dently not heard the maid announce me, for she had one 
hand upon the window bolt and was looking out towards 
the Gardens. As I came in and stood watching her, Fiona 
turned, came towards me, faintly wagging her tail, stopped 
a yard away and, lying on her back, gazed at me with 
unebullient friendliness. I could see Edith’s profile, the 


EDITH LAWTON 


155 


pale gold of her hair, now “ up ” and dressed in soft coils, 
the low forehead, the small, straight nose, the little pink 
mouth with the serious air. Upon the bolt lay her slender, 
white hand; as she stooped I observed, detached as if I 
looked at a statue, the long curves of her arms and shoulders, 
the noble straight line of her back. Upon the carpet Fiona 
lay and rubbed herself, grunting a little with content; very 
lightly her tail went “ swish, swish ” across the pile. 

Edith turned round, saw me. But she did not blush 
bright as I expected; a faint flush, no more, rose to her 
cheeks. She smiled, came towards me, her hand frankly 
outstretched. 

“ How do you do, Mr. Cadoresse.^ I didn’t hear you 
come in.” 

“ How do you do.^ ” 

I released her hand, which I had held just that fraction 
of time which expresses significant instead of emotional 
salutation. She did not seem disturbed, sat down on the 
settee, indicating a chair with a movement so gracious that 
it chilled me a little, until I realised, which I did within 
a few minutes, that Edith the child had become a woman. 
She was a woman, though but eighteen, having been forced 
towards maturity by association with the bolder Belgian 
and German girls. She was conscious instead of self- 
conscious. 

” What were you looking at.^ ” I asked, as I bent down 
to tickle Fiona behind the ear. 

” I don’t know. The motors, and the people in the 
Gardens. They’re sitting down, some of them, as if it was 
midsummer.” 

“ As if it was ” grated upon me. How those English 
speak English! But I resisted the impulse to correct and 
patronise. 

“ I too,” I said, “ like looking at people. They’re all 
so different.” 

” Yes,” said Edith, softly, they’re all different. All 
doing something different, wanting something different.” 


156 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I watched her. This interest of hers in people, it was 
not every one’s interest. Edith was not pricing garments, 
as Maud would be, or gauging elegance, which Muriel 
could not help doing. There was a gentle reflectiveness 
in her preoccupation. 

“So you realise they have lives?” I suggested; “that 
they’re not ready-made goods produced by the hundred 
million? ” 

“ Of course.” She laughed. “ I like to think they 
have wonderful lives, and some of them dreadful lives — ” 
She paused abruptly. “ Oh, well, it’s none of my business. 
Mother’ll be down in a minute.” 

I think she had broken the spell with intent, for she 
seemed embarrassed, hurried. You too, Edith, you were 
afraid in that first minute of “ giving yourself away.” Or 
instinct watched over you. 

Mrs. Lawton did not come down for some time, as I 
was an early caller and she was not ready. So I went on 
talking to Edith and scratching Fiona’s ear. Edith had 
become a little aloof after she had expressed more of her 
soul than she intended, and now I did most of the talking; 
at times she interjected a leading question. 

“ I suppose you had a good time this summer? ” 

As it happened I had been to Pontaillac, where my 
mother had taken a small villa for the season. I described 
Pontaillac, the haunts of the Bordeaux smart set, the little 
woods, the vine-clad hills. 

“ And you see the Gironde,” I said. “ It’s lighter than 
the sea; it looks grey, while the sea is green. Across the 
estuary you can see the cliffs, and it is so hot that some- 
times there is a mirage and another line of cliffs seems to 
sit upside down on the top of the real ones.” 

“ How lovely ! ” said Edith, without excitement. She 
induced me to talk of the open cafes, the petits chevaux, 
which had not in those days been superseded by la houle; 
of the extraordinary clothes, notably the red trousers the 
Bordelais like to wear at the seaside. She said it was 


EDITH LAWTON 


157 

rather like Ostend_, asked whether I did not think all 
seaside places were alike. 

“ Hardly/’ I said. “ There’s nothing like the English 
ones, nothing so dull. Worthing, for instance.” Then I 
plunged, looked her straight in the eyes and said, “ I’ve 
been to Worthing, on a Sunday League trip.” 

“How jolly!” said Edith. And her smile meant that 
she thought it jolly. 

It amused and pleased me that she did not snub me as 
Muriel had done when I mentioned this inexpensive 
pleasure. 

The keynotes of this and of other conversations I had 
with Edith were always the same: frankness and fresh- 
ness, mixed with sudden reserves. She was the young girl, 
who is modest and bold, not la jeune file, who is curious 
and furtive. She was afraid of the things she did not 
understand, and became shy and silent whenever I spoke 
of anything that verged on the ” naughty,” as the English 
say. Naughty! you have to be English to be “naughty”; 
if you are French and “ naughty ” you are bad. 

II 

I talked a good deal with Edith during the next few 
months. Ours was a paradoxic relation: absolute but lim- 
ited frankness; that is to say, the things we could discuss 
we discussed without reserves, while we ignored the others. 
She frequently fell to my share, for Hugh was being more 
and more closely hemmed in by Louisa Kent and watched 
by Bessie Surtees, while Muriel, who was not jealous, was 
quite equal to enjoying simultaneously Edward, Dicky Bell 
and Neville or any men she could detach from Gladys 
Raleigh. Muriel made no piratical efforts: she was an 
Autolycus — she gathered rather than stole. So very often 
I found that I talked to Edith for an hour at a time, and 
there was about her a fragrance of youth which slowly 
began to charm me. I did not love her, not yet, but I felt 


158 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


pleasure in her society, a gentle, unemotional pleasure. As 
we talked I found myself analysing her mentally as well 
as physically, realising her grace and her toy-like dainti- 
ness. But I suspected that under the toy-like exterior was 
some strength, not that noble strength of action which is 
given to so few women, but the strength of uncomplaining 
endurance. She almost expressed it once when I asked her 
whether it did not bore her to drive in the Park with Mrs. 
Lawton’s aged mother. 

“Well,” she said, “it’s not very amusing; she’s funny, 
she’s always losing her spectacles, or her handkerchief. 
Or she wants to stop and look at the children feeding the 
ducks, or playing. She made me get out yesterday and 
tackle five dirty little boys who were picnicking ” 

“ Picnicking! ” I cried; “ in December.” 

“ Yes. Small boys will do that sort of thing. They 
had a sham camp fire and a sentry to watch for the park- 
keeper — anyhow. Grannie made me ask them all their 
names and whether they were Hurons or Iroquois, which, 
of course, they didn’t know, and give them a penny each 
to buy rifles. We had quite a little crowd before I had 
done. I felt ” 

“ Silly ” I suggested out of mere mischief. 

“ Of course I felt silly,” said Edith, with sweet severity. 
“ One does hate to be looked at. Still, she likes it, and 
what does it matter ? ” 

I gave vent to a little Nietzscheanism. 

“ Well, perhaps you’re right, but one has to bear a few 
things in life, hasn’t one ? ” Edith looked at me with so 
soft an expression in her blue eyes' that I wanted to 
agree with her, but as I did not reply she went on: “It 
wouldn’t be good for one, would it, to do everything one 
liked.? ” 

“ It would be very pleasant.” 

“ Yes, I suppose it would be nice. But if one always 
did what one liked one would become so selfish, one 


EDITH LAWTON 159 

wouldn't remember how to do anything for anybody. Per- 
haps it isn’t good for one to be too happy.** 

“ Puritan/’ I said. 

“I wonder whether I am?” Edith looked reflectively 
at her slim hands. “ I don’t think so, though; I like to 
enjoy myself, only I want other people to enjoy themselves 
too.” 

Edith was not telling the truth: at heart she distrusted 
pleasure; she loved it, but she was never sure that it was 
not sinful. Ten generations of Protestant ancestors had 
given her an attitude almost incomprehensible to a Roman 
Catholic, that is a Pagan, such as I. But the gentle 
severity of it, her rectitude and simplicity, appealed to me 
as the pretty Quaker maidens have ever appealed to the 
most hardened adventurers. And I was far from being 
hardened ; I had loved often and lightly, but seldom 
grossly; that is, I had always managed to introduce into 
the most commonplace adventures a strain of romantic 
idealism. 

I wondered, after this conversation, whether Edith were 
more capable of idealism than of enthusiasm. I was not 
sure, for it is not often a human creature can feel intensely 
in one way only; I ought to have known her better, to 
have understood how fettered and canalised is the English 
faculty for romance. I ought to have guessed that Edith 
sometimes thought of love and marriage, if never of love 
alone; that she had visions of a very respectful lover, very 
strong and very gentle, very brave, very generous, upright. 
God-fearing, and reasonably addicted to the virile habits 
of tobacco, oaths and drink. A sort of Launcelot, this, not 
Hugh’s Galahad; a Launcelot with a commission in the 
Guards. 

It is true that Edith did not help me much. She was 
all implications ; she never revealed herself, never tore 
her body off to show me her soul. But that is not the 
way of the soulful. Besides, I had not often the oppor- 
tunities I needed to cross-examine her, to drive her by 


160 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


syllogism and inference into positions which would compel 
her to confess; though we talked long we seldom talked 
alone: rival conversations intruded upon ours or threatened 
to do so, so that I could not produce the atmosphere in 
which men and women tell one another the things that 
matter. Curiously enough, in those days I never wondered 
whether there were anything to be drawn from Edith; 
already, no doubt, I suspected that Edith must be as other 
women, an extraordinary field where grew flowers of im- 
pression, desire and reticence; I must have suspected that 
she wanted certain things desperately, and none the less 
desperately because dumbly. Edith, it is true, was not 
alone in my thoughts, for I still pursued Maud with the 
hopeless obstinacy a man can exhibit only if he live in 
the same house as the one he favours. I had then as 
a somewhat cynical motto that there were many good fish 
in the sea, and I would have forgotten Maud when another 
woman crossed my path if I had not seen her every day. 
She had not altered much. On the night of my arrival, 
when she granted me that bold but deceptive kiss, she had 
been young for seventeen. Two years later she was young 
for nineteen. Her training was finished: she never would 
have had any training if the Hoopers had not faintly 
hoped that by wasting time they could gain time, prevent 
her from going on the stage and safely marry her off. 
They would gladly have married her off to me. 

“ Yes, she’s getting a big girl now,” Mrs. Hooper said, 
ruminatively ; “ she oughtn’t to be on the shelf long. 
Not,” she added with compunction, “ that I want to lose 
my little Maudie, though — ” (proudly) “ — with all her 
education — ^well, well, I suppose it’ll always be the same; 
young gentlemen are already paying her attentions ; 
there’s Mr. Saunders, he’s doing well in the Estate office. 
And Mr. Colley — ^though a dancing master, Mr. Cadoresse 
—well ” 

” Exactly,” I said, my masculine pride being exasperated 
by any idea of rivals. 


EDITH LAWTON l6l 

“ Yes, that’s just what I think. Still — of course, it’s 
not like Lulu.” 

Mrs. Hooper sighed, for Lulu at seventeen had fulfilled 
the promise of being plain which she made at fifteen. She 
had maintained her one characteristic of reading penny 
novels, and acquired no others. I think I saw Lulu the 
other day (she must be twenty-five now) ; she was stouter 
and wore good, dowdy clothes : some paper-backs were 
sticking out of her muff. 

“ You’ve never thought of getting married, Mr. 
Cadoresse.^ ” 

I parried, alleged youth and lack of money. 

“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Hooper, encouragingly; “young 
people can’t expect to begin where their parents left off.” 

Mrs. Hooper began to enlarge once more on her daugh- 
ter’s accomplishments, her dancing, her singing. “ Comes 
in so handy in society,” she said. Evidently she thought 
that the teaching of Mother Tinman could be made into 
a refined asset, that in days to come Maud would, thanks 
to Mother Tinman, shine in, say, Kensal Green circles. 
Perhaps charity concerts — or graciously political socials. 

Maud was franker. 

“ Oh, I let the old dear talk. I know what I’m after. 
You don’t think I swallowed old Bella Billion neat and 
her tooraloo and keeping the limelight on your pearlies. 
I wasn’t going to start up as a third line girl on a quid 
a week and work up to the first and wait ten years for a 
line: No! I’ll start up in the flies, old dear, give you my 
solemn ! ” 

She had changed, I suppose, though she seemed young 
for nineteen. The vernacular of the stage had gained on 
the cockney. But she remained hard, invincible, ready to 
play me off against Saunders or Mr. Colley. Their cause 
advanced no more than mine. 

“ Of course ma sits dreaming (dreams of love and 
dreams of you) — every time she thinks she’s spotted a 
winner. Why, the old dear can’t say rice, or slipper. 


162 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


without making a goo-goo sort of eye at me — you know^ 
the ‘ Bless you, my cheeild/ sort of eye. But I’m not 
taking any, I can tell You. Don’t say I wouldn’t look 
at a Duke if there’s one going cheap, or even an Earl, but 
she’s backed a wrong ’un if she thinks I’m going to warm 
Saunders’s slippers for him or prance round with the grocer 
for the sake of the Signor.” 

I laughed, for Maud had gauged “ Signor ” Colley’s 
affection, but the subtle quality of “ spotting a winner ” 
and a “ wrong ’un ” tended to show that Saunders, the 
“ sport,” had made some headway. I was not indifferent, 
indeed I chafed, for the brown eyes had never been so 
bright, the small pointed hands so firm and cool, but I had 
learned prudence, dared not be called sulky, as Maud 
applied sulkiness in return and always beat me at the 
game. If I did not allow myself to be wooed back after 
having been practically insulted she sometimes refused to 
speak to me for several days. 

“ Such a spirited girl,” said Mrs. Hooper, fondly. 

When this happened I fell back on Mr. Hooper, who 
had completely failed to educate me in the tenets of 
Conservatism, though he had taken me to his club, in a 
back street off the Harrow Road, to be properly grounded 
by his fellow members and occasional speakers from the 
headquarters of Unionist, naval and military societies. I 
had no precise politics in those days, I had nothing but 
an unappeasable thirst for information which made me 
read, in the Tube, at lunch and in the intervals of work, 
indigestible chunks of oratory, emasculated Liberal ideas 
in the Tory papers, and garbled Conservatism in the 
Radical press. For two years I had every day been 
reading the paper, skipping sports, murders and law 
reports; I had abandoned foreign affairs, for was I not 
going to be an Englishman? Tariff Reform and Free 
Trade pamphlets, booklets on the land question, licensing, 
the iniquities and virtues of the House of Lords, the 
rights of Chinamen, all this jostled in my head, slowly 


EDITH LAWTON 


163 


ordering itself, mixed with the history politicians use, tags 
about Magna Charta, Cromwell, Burke, Phoenix Park, 
Gladstone and the paper duty, Disraeli and primroses. I 
suppose I knew as much about politics as the ordinary 
man, perhaps more, for I wanted to know, while he merely 
had to. But Mr. Hooper failed to move me, no doubt 
because the Lawtons were Liberals; if Lawton, Hugh and 
their women had been repellent to me I should have been 
a Tory Democrat, which is the rough equivalent of the 
French Radical I was. But the Lawtons were the great 
English and could do no wrong. 

I did not, however, despise the Conservatives, for they 
too were English and could not be quite wrong. Thus 
Mr. Hooper retained hopes of saving my political soul. 
Sometimes, at the club, he spoke. I can see him, a thin, 
bald little figure, with a melancholy blue eye. He stands 
upon the low platform, holding tight the lapels of his 
frock-coat : 

“ — The Free Traders are always saying — er — that the 
tariff would raise prices. Now, gentlemen, I don’t think 
anybody can say what will happen — er — under — under 
the new system. Of course they might, the prices I mean 
— but then if we were getting more for our work it wouldn’t 
matter. Of course, there are all sorts of ways, like Layshell 
Mobil ” 

Then Mr. Hooper would throw back his- mind to Five 
Thousand Facts and Fancies, or some other book of the 
kind, and expound L'Echelle Mobile, that cunning re- 
ciprocal scale of prices and duties, becoming eloquent and 
secure as soon as he abandoned ideas for the firm ground of 
fact. But at last he would tail off again into references 
to “ Joe ” (for whom there was a large cheer and a faint 
Unionist Free Trade hiss), beg the audience to give the 
tariff a fair trial. A fair trial! that is what impressed 
me in the dingy little club, which had as a president an 
undertaker and as members some fifty shopkeepers, 
workmen and clerks. Even here, in a dusty back room. 


164 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


which always smelled of pipes, the tendency was to ex- 
amine the new idea suspiciously and yet to try it. I 
never heard anybody talk wildly of high protection, or 
call the opposition leader a liar, a traitor or a hireling in 
Germany’s pay. The members seldom interrupted: if they 
did the undertaker stroked his grey whiskers and said 
“ Gentlemen ! ” with an air of shocked mournfulness, possi- 
bly professional, which at once restored peace. They were 
sane, moderate; they believed in the decencies of debate. 
Perhaps they were too sane. Often I longed to jump up, 
and though I was nominally a Liberal, roar : “ Down with 
the Little Englanders ! ” I wanted to wake the little club 
up, but I felt dimly that it would not wake up. The club 
was neither awake nor asleep, it was sleep-walking. If 
I had shouted I should not have been thrown downstairs as 
an interrupter ought to be thrown; the undertaker would 
have said: “Questions will be allowed later.” Still, it 
was good to think that tempers could be so well kept — ^if 
there were tempers. 

Ill 

But my political days were only dawning. They were 
near, but Edith was nearer, and as I turned away from 
the glare of Maud’s footlights I began to see the soft 
glimmer of Edith. One startling fact stood out: I had 
not kissed Edith under the mistletoe. I was a guest at 
the dignified Christmas dinner on which followed a dim 
rowdiness of games; I had dragged Muriel, Bessie Surtees 
and laughing Gladys Raleigh under the iconoclastic berry 
and publicly kissed them; I had seen Edith kissed by 
almost every one of the men, from the collected Edward 
Kent to the self-doubting Neville. But I had not kissed 
her; I could have done so and, for one moment, I wanted 
to; then I hesitated and knew that I was not lost. Some 
unexplained impulse prevented me from treating in 
sportive wise the Dresden Shepherdess, something tremu- 


EDITH LAWTON 


165 


lous that made my heart beat. I was not in love with her, 
I told myself, but I could not bear to think that I would 
have to wrench her slim shoulders round and force upon 
her a caress which she would not permit if the idiotic 
license of Christmas did not compel her to do so. 

It was a long time before I knew that I wanted Edith’s 
lips consenting, and not conventional. 

But soon accident ^ was to intervene and to drive us 
further towards intimacy. I had not seen Edith for a 
fortnight when, one Saturday afternoon, as I walked down 
Bond Street, where on that day I liked to shopgaze though 
most of the showcases were sealed by iron shutters or 
holland blinds, I saw her slowly coming up the hill. I 
knew her at once, by her long measured stride, the rigidity 
of her carriage and the un-English steadiness of her arms. 

Almost tall in her tight blue coat and skirt. Her little 
feet shone in patent leather. Upon the high, boned neck 
of her plain white blouse, the flower of her winter-stung 
face, crowned with a small blue velvet hat, round which 
circled a light blue feather. Gently she came with down- 
cast eyes, easy, slow-moving and slim, like a fishing smack 
under little sail. She saw me, stopped, and as she smiled 
I mumbled of the fineness of the day, for I was stirred 
by the surprise of the meeeting. I, Cadoresse, man of the 
world, hero of thirty affairs of the heart, stood almost 
abashed because a Dresden Shepherdess was prettily 
smiling. She said she had been lunching with two girls 
who had that morning been examined at Burlington House, 
and now she was going home. I detained her, talked 
quickly and idly, of Hugh, the big poulterer opposite, 
Fiona, anything that came to me, so that I might think 
how to prolong a meeting which Edith was very sweetly 
but firmly trying to cut short. 

Then an idea struck me. 

“Look here,” I said; “ I suppose you are in no hurry. 
Have you seen the Claude Monets ? ” 

“ No — you mean the painter? ” 


166 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ Yes, Monet, the impressionist. They are showing him 
just there.” I indicated with a nod a gallery over the 
way. “ You must come. He’s wonderful.” 

“ I’d love to, but ” fs 

“ The show will be closed in three days,” I lied ; “ now 
you have nothing to do, have you ? ” 

“No, but — ” Edith paused. Evidently she wanted 
to come, and evidently she was afraid. But it would not 
do, I knew, to let her see that I knew. I grew fervid, 
urged educational value, the dulness of Saturday; then 
I was inspired to say: 

“ Besides, I want to go myself, and I hate going 
alone.” 

“ Very well, then,” said Edith, moved by this argument. 
In the cause of human charity she followed me across 
the road, and I glowed with my victory, for was I not 
experiencing a new sensation: taking one of the house 
of Lawton to a public spectacle.^ This was not like the 
familiar, jostling, arm-in-arm strolls with Maud, for we 
stood away from each other, dignified, careful that our 
elbows should not touch. It was a cold companionship, 
aLin to that of a king and queen who sit on a common 
throne, but on separate chairs; but, after all, we were only 
paying for our quality. 

It was a small show, the series of twelve (or is it 
twenty?) rustic bridges spanning the reed-grown rivulet. 
I have forgotten the details, remember only the atmosphere 
of the pictures, for all represent an absolutely similar 
subject, and all differ in lighting and weather. Their 
colour, though, I remember well, their faintness and sug- 
gestion of transience and the baldness of that suggestion: 
for in those days, when Post-Impressionists had not yet 
slain Sisley, when Futurism was swathed in the veils of 
the future, the Impressionists were still impressive. We 
stopped in front of the third. There the bridge stood in 
the grey morning, a black shadow on a sky which, a few 
minutes earlier, had been as black. The reeds hung 


EDITH LAWTON 167 

dejected and damp in the whitish mist that rose from the 
river. 

“ What do you think of it ? ” I asked. 

Edith did not reply for a moment, then said : It looks 
very cold, doesn’t it } ” 

“ Yes, but do you like it? ” 

“ Yes, I suppose I do, because it makes me feel cold — 
melancholy.” 

I listened with a mixed feeling. This was not exactly 
stereotyped art criticism, which of course interested me, 
but it was, I thought, too subjective. 

” But don’t you think it beautiful? ” 

I don’t know. Yes. It is pretty.” 

“ I think it beautiful,” I repeated, emphasising the 
adjective. “ Why, look at the light, so pale and so watery. 
I’ve seen it like that, very early, when I was mounting 
guard on the fortifications.” 

“ You mean when you were on sentry-go,” Edith cor- 
rected. “ Of course, I’ve never been up so early, but that 
doesn’t matter, does it? If it makes me feel it must be 
like that ? ” 

I suspect. Miss Lawton,” I said, after another re- 
flective pause, “ that you know a good deal about 
pictures.” 

“ Oh, no, no, I don’t,” cried Edith, with an air of distress. 
“ When we were at Brussels they took us to the Wiertz 
now and then, but I don’t really know anything. I really 
don’t. Only, I want to feel something.” 

We wrangled amicably over the next two. I had an 
expert air, I liked to use the words “ background,” “ fore- 
ground,” “ masses ; ” I liked to hear myself say eclair- 
age/* Suddenly I saw myself as I was and said (to 
myself) : prig. Edith, I felt, was the truer appreciator 
of us two, for she wanted to feel, not to judge. She did 
not measure pictures by a standard of quality, as do the 
men who cannot understand them; while they have for 
them a set of units, equivalents of pints and yards, such 


168 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


women as Edith, who know nothing and understand every- 
thing, have a standard of emotion. 

“ That one,” she said ; “ it’s lovely.” 

“ Yes,” I replied. “ It looks as if it were painted with 
crushed opals and with the powder of those mauve pebbles, 
like old, dull glass, that you find on the seashore.” 

Edith said nothing, and I went on criticising the picture, 
enthusiastically, for it held all the flush of a wet dawn. 
I was literary, a little artificial, but at the bottom of the 
artifice was some truth, and I wondered whether Edith 
lacked artifice because no admiration was in her to inspire 
it. I doubted her especially when, suddenly, she said: 

“ Muriel has a dress just like that.” 

“ Perhaps she has seen the picture,” I spitefully 
suggested. 

“ Oh, no, Muriel wouldn’t come here.” Edith gave a 
frank laugh and, as I joined in, my chilled feeling passed 
away, for here we were in the domain of the very little 
things which matter so much. Accomplices. 

” Isn’t she artistic ? ” 

“ No, I shouldn’t say so. Her dressmaker’s rather 
clever.” 

” I suppose her dressmaker is your sister’s salvation.” 

” Very likely.” 

Edith looked at the next picture as she spoke the two 
curt words; she had turned away from me a very little, 
a significant couple of inches, and a slight rigidity had 
come into the set of her shoulders. I felt I had said the 
wrong thing. I still had to learn what family loyalty 
means, but at that moment I began to realise dimly that 
Edith could have said “ Muriel is a beast,” while, if I 
had said “ Muriel is a beast,” Edith would have replied: 
“ How dare you speak of My sister like that? ” Con- 
scious of the snub, I talked more briskly, compelled her to 
stop in front of the other studies, delicate fantasies in 
blue, and others, full of twilight, where the leaf was heavy 
and green. Little by little Edith seemed to forgive; she 


EDITH LAWTON 169 

answered me, and, at last, when we stood before the last 
picture, we were once more side by side. 

“ That’s the best,”* she said, decisively. “ I like all that 
colour; it’s sunshine. It’s pretty — ” Then, her eyes 
twinkled as she added : “ Beautiful, as you say.” 

“ It is beautiful,” I said, aggressively. “ But why don’t 
you say ‘ beautiful } ’ ” 

“ I don’t know — it seems ” 

“What?” 

“ Well, you know — exaggerated. We say things are 
pretty, or lovely ” 

“ Or nice? ” 

“ Yes — nice — I mean, at school we used to say ‘ nice * 
a lot, but they say I mustn’t now. Like ‘ horrid.’ ” 

“ But do they say you mustn’t say ‘ beautiful? ’ ” 

“ One mustn’t exaggerate,” said Edith, with an air of 
gentle obstinacy. And further than that I could not draw 
her. 

Apparently “ beautiful,” save when it was used by a 
long-haired pianist, was the word of a gushing schoolgirl 
which womanly Edith ought not to be. I was inclined 
to pursue the subject, to get to the bottom of this modesty 
of Edith’s ears. 

“ I know what you mean,” I said; “it was like that at 
my school. If anybody tried to recite poetry properly 
everybody laughed at him.” 

“ One mustn’t show off. Still — I don’t mean one ought 
not to recite properly.” 

“ But not like an actor ? ” 

“ No, of course not. That would be showing off.” 

“ But do good actors show off? No, of course not. Then 
oughtn’t one to recite Shakespeare like an actor?” 

“ There’s something between,” said Edith. 

I knew what she meant, something between Kean and 
a gabbling child, something moderate, English. And I 
therefore felt that she was right. We were still standing 
in front of the sunlit picture; there were only four people 


170 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


in the gallery just then: another young couple, who whis- 
pered in a corner, so near the picture that they certainly 
could not see it, an old gentleman who painstakingly looked 
at each study through a handglass held in front of his 
speectacles, and a quick, angular woman with a notebook. 
She was too busy to notice us; a journalist probably, 
making notes for an article. We were not looking at the 
picture, but covertly at each other. 

“ Yes,’" I said, reflectively, “ that did bother me at 
school. But, of course, you remember better; you haven’t 
left it so long ago.” 

“ No,” said Edith. “ I liked it, you know.” She began 
speaking of the Belgian school, some girls, Caroline de 
Woesten, a certain Henriette, who recurred. We used to 
see the Prince, riding in the Avenue Louise, in the 
morning.” 

“ Did you smile at him? ” 

** Of course we did, all of us, he was so handsome. 
Caroline bought a picture postcard of him and hid it in her 
desk; she did get into trouble when Madame Beaujour 
found it, with a poem on the back. It began: 

“ Prince Albert, je vous adore, 

Pour la vie et pour la mort. . . .” 

We laughed together. And Edith looked almost melan- 
cholic, though her head, thrown back, showed a white 
throat that swelled with laughter, as she thought of the 
good old times that were not so very old. 

“ They weren’t good verses, were they? But then 
Caroline’s only a baby, only sixteen now.” 

“ Well,” I said, “ you’re not much older.” 

Fm eighteen,” said Edith, very staid. “ And what 
about you? ” 

I paused before I replied, for the question pleased and 
surprised me. “ Not quite twenty-five.” 

I suppose that does feel old,” said Edith. 


EDITH LAWTON 171 

We were silent for some moments. Then we heard the 
chimes of St. George’s Church. A quarter past four. 

“ I must go,” said Edith, hurriedly. 

“ Yes,” I said, ” but not yet. It is time to go and have 
tea.” 

“ Oh, no, I couldn’t — I really couldn’t.” 

“ Well, you might ask me to go back to Lancaster Gate 
to have it.” 

“ You can if you like. Do come.” 

” But do you know if anybody else will be at home? ” 

“ No, I don’t think so. Still ” 

” Well then, you may as well come with me to the 
Carlton.” 

“ Oh, no, no ; not the Carlton.” 

Edith seemed frightened, as I expected, and I watched 
the success of my ruse, for I guessed that, by giving her 
the shock of the Carlton, I could make any other place 
appear innocent. 

“No,” I said, smilingly machiavellian; “we’ll go to 
Mrs. Robertson’s. Come along.” 

I think I took her elbow for a moment to urge her on, 
and at once released it so as not to frighten her. She was 
blushing a little and did not speak much as we went 
through Mrs. Robertson’s passage and up the stairs, but 
she seemed unnaturally self-possessed when she sat down, 
so self-possessed that I realised she was nervous. I could 
see her, as I ordered tea, look quickly to the right and left 
in case some one should know her. But the week-end 
calm already hung over the dignified tea-shop, which has 
now followed many Victorian dignities into the grave ; 
there was nothing to disturb her, for one couple had so 
arranged their seats as to turn their backs upon us, while 
the family up from the country seemed too busy with 
topics of its own to trouble about us. A tall, melancholic 
young man, who was evidently waiting for somebody, broke 
the tedium of his watch over the door by frequent, if 
discreet glances at Edith, but on the whole we were unob- 


172 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


served; besides, I made some business of ordering the tea, 
complications of toasted scones and their degree of toast- 
ing, so as to give Edith time to settle thoroughly into the 
faintly compromising slough. And then, as we rather 
silently drank our tea, I looked at her, established in the 
large chintz-covered armchair. 

She sat up very straight. The blue hat and the pale 
golden hair stood out against a green curtain. The moon 
of her face looked like a delicate rose, soft by the side of 
those vivid roses which sprawled over the chintz. Her 
open coat showed her plain white blouse, revealed by the 
slimness of her that the child had not long been expelled 
and the woman installed. One ungloved hand lay upon 
the table, and the rosy finger-tips played idly with the lace 
edge of the teacloth. She looked up, and suddenly was 
mischievous : 

“ I shan’t be able to tell anybody I came here, you 
know.” 

“ Of course not,” I said, smoothly ; though I don’t 
know why.” 

” You do know why, Mr. Cadoresse,” she said, and I 
found her severe. “ You of all people, a Frenchman. 
Why, French girls don’t even go out alone.” 

I agreed. I attacked the French system, was all for 
freedom. Edith did not differ from me; she, too, thought 
it silly that girls should be watched. 

“ But then, perhaps the French know what they’re do- 
ing,” she added. “ They may be right and we wrong.” 

Her liberalism charmed me, and I repressed the desire 
to tell her that she had not faced the question, that French- 
men and French girls could not be allowed English liber- 
ties, lacking English innocence. We spoke guardedly of 
chaperonage, of marriage in France, and Edith showed 
some indignation when I told her that my sister Jeanne 
had but poor chances because her dot was only fifty thou- 
sand francs. 

“ Two thousand pounds,” she said. 


“ It seems a lot — 


EDITH LAWTON 173 

but don’t you think it dreadful? One doesn’t want to 
marry for money.” 

I agreed, though in my heart I differed. I did not state 
the case for the French marriage, the restfulness of it, 
its ease and secureness. I did not want to oppose Edith, 
to shock her, annoy or frighten her; she was with me so 
simple and so frank that I did not want to lay hard hands 
upon her dreams. And, thanking my star for so much 
good fortune, I did not try to detain her when she rose 
to go. We parted at Bond Street Station. 

“ Good-bye,” she said, as we shook hands ; “ thank you 
for a very pleasant afternoon.” My spirit rebelled against 
the conventional phrase, but again came the mischief : “ I 
don’t know what I shall say at home if they’re back.” 

I still had in mine the hard-impressed illusion of her 
firm, gloved hand. And in my mind was the conscious- 
ness that we shared a secret, she and I. A guilty one. 
I carried with me the feeling that I had had an adventure 
by the side of which coarse realities did not seem real, 
for visions are sometimes keener than concrete things; a 
dream may be more vivid than a material object which the 
eye can overlook. She had been so simple, had confided 
in me as readily as her reserve would let her; she had 
become a significant figure in my life. She was imprinted 
upon my brain no longer as the younger Miss Lawton, 
but as Edith. 

In her home she was not the same; she did not avoid 
me, but she did not deliver herself into my hands; she 
was, like Muriel, my good comrade. As I grew familiar 
with the house and its tenants I accepted this comradeship 
so foreign to my nature. Before three years had passed 
I was then so anglicised that I was able to look upon 
women less as women than as human beings. My thoughts 
no longer leapt so quickly to their pretty faces; I found 
in their society the mixed and purely English feeling which 
makes of girls and boys gathered together a large family. 
I could still admire Muriel, her challenging eyes, and 


174 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Louisa Kent’s rosy skin; I meant what I said when I told 
Bessie Surtees she looked like an Italian Madonna, but 
an element had been obseured in my imagination; I was 
less disturbed, less preoecupied by these young women than 
I would have been in earlier days. I came to England 
ready to pursue even a Lulu Hooper, to accept her ridicu- 
lous taste for novelettes, unable to look upon any woman, 
young or old, beautiful or ugly, without keen consciousness 
of her womanhood. But now some strange scales had 
grown upon my eyes, for I could chaff and bear chaff from 
the graceful and the fair without being provoked by con- 
flict; I could let Muriel re-tie my black bow into a more 
modish shape without leaning forward to breathe the 
suavity of her dark hair. 

They were comrades, all of them. It was comrade 
Muriel pushing past me into the drawing-room, butting 
me with her shoulder as she passed and telling me good- 
humouredly to get out of the way; and comrade Gladys 
(though precise) fearlessly touching my hand as she helped 
me to set up a ping-pong net; it was comrade Bessie with 
the deep eyes, comrade Edith too. There were no rough- 
nesses of contact between us, for I feared to touch her, 
just as if she actually were a Dresden Shepherdess, so much 
that, at a Cinderella, she had to beg me not to hold her 
as if she were a meringue. There was comradeship even 
between me and Maud, when there was not sulkiness or 
fierce allure, an incomprehensible capacity for wrangling, 
contradicting each other, for throwing small objects 
at each other under the meek, protesting eyes of Mrs. 
Hooper. 

Was the English fog getting into my blood? 

I carried with me no disquiet as I went to my work, 
which I did well enough, inspired by the comparatively 
speedy rise of my salary to a hundred and sixty a year. 
I was still foreign correspondent, but I was now framing 
my letters and submitting them to Mr. Lawton instead 
of merely taking his instructions. I enjoyed a hearing 


EDITH LAWTON 


175 


when I had something to say. Merton and Tyler no 
longer presumed to chaff me, and sometimes I lunched 
with Barker in the chop-houses I affected because they 
had bills of fare and not menus. It was in the chop- 
houses, and especially in the Meccas and Caros where I 
drank my necessary coffee, that Barker criticised my criti- 
cisms of England. 

“ You silly old josser,” served him usually as a begin- 
ning. “ You don’t know what you’re talking about. 
You’re always gassing about our being cold and never 
letting ourselves go; one might think you never read the 
police news, or that you’d never seen anybody tight. You 
should come down our way, you should; I’d show you 
something when they turn ’em out of the pubs. They 
come out like a lot o’ sheep, laughing and singing like — 
jackasses, and kissing and going on anyhow; there’s always 
a fight going on round the corner, all about nothing, only 
to let off steam, which you say we haven’t got. And if 
you like to come on a bit further I’ll show you Clapham 
Common about eleven; that’ll open your eye. Froggy; you 
haven’t got a monopoly of that sort of thing in gay Paree. 
Now I’ll tell you something. One night I was walking 
home across the Common ” 

Handsome, gay Englishmen like Barker always end by 
telling one stories in which they have figured as frightful 
dogs. The stories are too disgusting to be true. English- 
men so much dislike bragging that they can brag only of 
the things they have not done. I put up particular instances 
of English coldness. 

“Well, what about it?” Barker commented. “What 
do you want old Purkis to Do? Want him to run round 
shrugging his shoulders and singing Mon Dew? And what 
about it if he does work in the garden ? ” 

I tried to put into words the immense contempt I felt 
for gardens, for this sordid growing of smutty flowers; 
it was difficult to express, for I did not know how to say 
without seeming a prig that men should keep their brains 


176 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


busier than their muscles. The innocent priggishness of 
the early days was smothered in self-consciousness. 

“ Dunno what you’re driving at,” said Barker at last. 
“ I like a bit of a garden; I indulge in geoponics,” he 
added, playfully. “ You talk of old Purkis ! Why, his 
place at Penge ” 

“ Sydenham,” I suggested. 

“ Bit of swank, Sydenham. It’s Penge I tell you, but 
what was I talking about? Oh, yes, old Purkis’s garden. 
You should see it in the summer time, it’s lovely.” 

“ But oh, in the winter time, in the winter time,” I 
quoted from Maud. 

“ Never you mind the winter time. In the summer it’s 
all over honeysuckle, and sweet peas and crimson ramblers. 
Why, he’s got a pergola . . .” 

Barker talked on inexhaustibly of gardens and garden- 
ing, for which he had early acquired a taste by working 
in his landlady’s flower-beds. When “ Mrs. Right came 
along ” he was not found unready. He bought a dog and 
began to satiate, on a space of ten yards by twenty, his 
English passion for the land. Barker was the raisonneur 
of the English play; he explained old Purkis, his crabbed 
love of his garden; he mitigated Farr by representing 
him as a decent man, fond also of his garden, sound in his 
politics and proud of his son. He had a broad tolerance 
for the futile “ sprees ” of Merton and Tyler, their shilling 
poplin ties and their shock-socks. 

“ Dunno what you want,” was his continued grumble. 
Then he would expound the creed of the plain man living 
beyond the four-mile radius: 


THE CREED OF A MIDDLE-CLASS MAN 

“ I believe in the suburbs of London. I believe 
they are enough for me. I believe that I must shave 
every evening and take a bath every morning, unless 


EDITH LAWTON 


177 


I have overslept myself^ wear dark suits as is 
seemly in the City. I believe in drawing-rooms 
for the use of callers, semi-detached villas, nas- 
turtiums in season and dogs with aristocratic, if dis- 
tant relatives. I believe that public-school boys. 
University men (who must not be called Varsity 
men), and commissioned officers are snobs. I be- 
lieve that the West End is a gilded haunt of vice. 
I believe in sober worship once a week, regular pay- 
ments to the clergy. I believe in temperance, saving 
an occasional bust, a spree, a night on the tiles 
(when the wife is in the country), but even then 
I believe I mustn’t go too far. I believe in a bit 
of fun with a lady now and then, being a dog and 
all that, so long as there’s no harm in it. I believe 
that I am a gentleman and must be genteel, not 
too tony though, for it must not be said that I 
swank. And I believe enough to be saved with. 
I believe that my wife loves me and that I must 
reward her by insuring my life; I believe that my 
sons should be clerks and that my daughters should 
wait until clerks marry them. I believe that, when 
I die, the neighbours must approve of my funereal 
pageant. I believe that I must be honest, that I 
must not swear in mixed company, that I must visit 
the upper classes whom I despise. I believe that 
I am the backbone of England. I am a middle- 
class man.” 


Barker loved to expound his creed. It seemed ridiculous 
that this well-groomed young fellow with the delicate 
mouth and the fine grey eyes should be a Puritan, but the 
blood of the Covenanters still flows through the English 
veins: that is really blood, not water. Still, there were 
impulses in him upon which I played; he liked to hear 
me brag of and unveil my conquests, invent adventures 


178 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


for his benefit; this exercise filled him with subtle, sinful 
delight. 

“ Shut up/’ he would say at last. But Barker’s shut 
up ” meant very little more than a woman’s “ don’t.” 

Sometimes, not often, I talked to him of the Lawtons, 
for whom, as represented by Mr. Lawton, Hugh and 
shadowy “ young ladies,” he harboured mixed feelings : 
envy, admiration and hatred. A sort of mental sandwich. 
But I never spoke of Edith. 

IV 

For Edith was stealing upon me, gently, softly, as the 
dawn steals up into the wet English skies, so subtly that 
one hardly knows it has come until one realises suddenly 
that the sun has risen. She came a little nearer when 
Hugh’s engagement leaked out, for love is contagious 
among the young. If this engagement of Hugh’s were 
love, of course, for I say advisedly that it leaked out; 
it was not proclaimed by an interested family, nor did 
it burst forth outrageously and irresistibly like a water- 
spout from the sea. Muriel told me, between an appre- 
ciation of the art of George Alexander and her plans for 
Easter on the South Coast. When I ventured to ask when 
Hugh would marry Louisa Kent, Muriel said: 

“ I don’t know. Year or two.” 

Evidently nobody had made any plans ; those two 
had not been affianced, they had “ got engaged.” The 
Lawtons did not seem much more moved than if Hugh 
had contracted the measles: measles and engagements gave 
a little trouble in the house, but in due course, as the 
measles would have been cured by lying in bed, the engage- 
ment would be remedied by marriage. I did not find 
Hugh much more emotional. 

“ I hear I am to congratulate you,” I said. 

“ Thanks, awfully.” He paused, then added, shame- 
facedly: “ Don’t let it out at the office,” 


EDITH LAWTON 


179 


Before I could promise a discretion which seemed 
unnecessary he was talking of his father’s chances at Ham- 
bury, which he was nursing in the Liberal interest. As 
he talked I wondered whether he cared for Louisa, when 
and where he had proposed to her. He had always seemed 
so aloof or so good-humoured when she was in the house. 
Yet he was making a love match; he must be, for Mrs. 
Kent’s house in Thurloe Place suggested comfort, not 
wealth. I priced Louisa Kent’s allowance at a hundred 
a year, perhaps less. But then — what was this love, this 
equable attraction.^ Was it not affection.? I should have 
expected from Hugh some splenetic fits, some attitudes 
of devotion, some rages. But no. If a postman knocked 
at the door when I was there, Hugh did not start up. 
He was attentive to Louisa, but he seemed equally atten- 
tive to Gladys Raleigh or to any other girl. And Louisa? 
A shade more triumphant, perhaps; she was a trifle more 
proprietorial in her attitudes, more secure in her “ I say, 
Hugh ” than she had been in her “ What do you think, 
Mr. Lawton? ” I wondered whether she had proposed to 
him. As I looked at the steady eyes, the firm-set rosy lips, 
I grew almost sure that she had not felt the cost of the 
first step. 

I soon had an opportunity of finding out. Eor now 
Edith was beginning to haunt me. Her picture did not 
obtrude itself upon me, as did sometimes the dashing figure 
of Maud; I did not walk with an ache in my heart, but 
I was disturbed by “ something ” that was about me, a 
vague, enveloping atmosphere, like an undefinable scent 
I might have brought with me in my clothes and suddenly 
perceived when the wind blew towards me, then forgotten, 
then noticed again. The Dresden Shepherdess did not 
follow me, but I could never be sure that, when I looked 
up from my desk, rested my pen, I would not see her 
slim figure before me. I might, at immense pains, be 
explaining to a French merchant that the bottomry bond 
he held on the brig Augustine-Therese was irrecoverable. 


180 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


the unfortunate ship having gone down with all hands off 
Vigo, when the slim figure would appear. I would lean 
back, look unseeing at the grey frontages of Fenchurch 
Street, evoke her, dressed in light blue or faint pink . . . 
with little knots of roses frilling the skirt ... a palely 
pink face, tender blue eyes, smooth hair of very old, worn 
silvergilt. I would try to dispel the vision, mutter fiercely 
“ bottomry . . . bottomry . . . nous regrettons. . . .” But 
my thoughts would wander. I found myself saying, writ- 
ing, “ barratry ” instead of “ bottomry,” thinking of her 
gentle presence, until it so insisted that I surrendered, gave 
myself up to an imprecise day-dream. Little Dresden 
Shepherdess, your hands hung idly by your sides, long 
and lax as sprays of fern, and when you smiled the bud 
of your mouth bloomed so sweetly as to be sad. Your eyes 
were like the mist in melancholy, when the sun is about to 
pierce it in merriment. 

My heart did not compel me to seek her, but I wanted 
to find her, and soon it was not enough to speak to her 
while Louisa played Bach to soothe her ridiculous brother 
and the indifferent Hugh, or while Muriel threw spells 
over Bell or Archie Neville; I wanted Edith alone, to 
speak to her of herself. I surprised myself in a big Oxford 
Street shop, at six, throwing quick glances at every fair 
girl — on the chance; I began to walk home along the 
Bayswater Road, which meant a quarter of an hour’s 
delay — on the chance, but I never met her. I grew exas- 
perated; I began to be angrily conscious that my office 
hours, ten to five-thirty, cut me off from the possibilities 
of intercourse. At last Edith precipitated the crisis; in 
reply to a question she said: 

“ Well, I don’t think women as good as men.” 

“Why.?” I asked. 

“ I’ll tell you some other time,” she said. And I could 
drive her no further, for Muriel, Hugh and Louisa came 
to claim me, to make me play bridge, a new accomplish- 
ment of mine. When I was dummy I looked at Edith; 


EDITH LAWTON 


181 


seated upon a large cushion she looked up at her father, 
who talked to her in low tones. Her blue eyes were full 
of sweet seriousness. I decided to make an opportunity 
to come closer to her, to haunt the neighbourhood until 
I could force my society upon her. 

And so I became a familiar of Lancaster Gate and the 
Bayswater Road, on weekdays between half-past six and 
seven, on Saturday afternoons, at odd times on Sundays. 
Waiting bored me, but racked my nerves, for I had to 
be careful as I hung at the corner of the street lest I 
should be seen by other members of the household; some- 
times I saw Hugh or Mr. Lawton come home, or the 
brougham stop at the door and disgorge Mrs. Lawton with 
Muriel; twice I saw Edith, but her mother or her sister 
accompanied her. I became naturalised to the district, 
knew the mews, the public-house; I expected the postman, 
the boys who deliver the late editions of the papers; the 
servants of other families seemed like old friends, and 
one housemaid began to look forward to my appearance, to 
smile up from the basement with an inviting air. And 
if the policeman had not often been changed I should 
certainly have been cautioned against loitering with intent 
to steal. I was ready for him, however, with a confession 
and half-a-crown. I had hardened, and though I hardly 
knew what I wanted, I was determined to have it if I had 
to wait for weeks. 

I did not have to watch for more than ten days. I 
knew I should not have to, for Easter had come; thus I 
could watch for two and a half days, during which Edith 
would certainly come out alone, for the family had not 
left for the South Coast; Muriel had gone on a visit in 
the country, while Hugh and his father went out early 
to golf. Edith would not always be with her mother. 
I was not wrong. At ten o’clock on Easter Monday the 
familiar door opened and Fiona came bounding down the 
steps, leaping at sparrows and barking as the sharp air 
sizzled through her coat. Behind her came Edith; she 


182 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


paused on the step, and I could feel my heart beating. 
The presence of Fiona meant that her mistress intended 
to walk in the Park; I felt exultant, as a poacher who, 
approaching his trap, hears an animal rattle it. She 
turned to the right; I followed cautiously, allowed her to 
cross into the Gardens, which she did slowly, for she 
carried Fiona across the road by the scruff of her neck. 
I ran a hundred yards westwards, entered the Gardens by 
the little gate, doubled back. For one deadening moment 
I thought I had lost her. Then, suddenly, I saw her 
coming towards me, who sauntered on as coolly as I 
could. 

“ Hullo, Fiona,” I said, bending down to the little beast, 
who snuffed my trousers and burrowed at my hand with 
her wet nose. Then, successfully affecting surprise : 
“ Good morning. Miss Lawton.” 

“ Oh, good morning. Isn’t it fine ? ” 

“Very, And so cold! I don’t appreciate it as much 
as Fiona does.” 

“ Oh, she’s Scotch ; she likes it.” 

I talked of the habits of Aberdeens, and, having turned 
by degrees until I faced westwards, moved step by step, 
drawing Edith on. By imperceptible gradations we began 
to walk side by side, slowly, then quickly, as if we had 
set out together. Edith, realising her entanglement, but 
finding nothing to urge against it, was embarrassed and 
rather silent. 

“ Tell me,” I said suddenly, “ what did you mean the 
other night, when you said that men were better than 
women ? ” 

“ Oh, I hardly know,” she reflected. “ It’s so difficult 
to find words. I feel somehow that we’re so small, so 
busy doing nothing, that it’s men who are making the roads 
in India, and fighting, and inventing things, and writing 
books, while we ... we sit at home and wait.” A slight 
weariness was in her young voice. 

“ That does not make them better,” I said. 


EDITH LAWTON 


183 


** it does. They’re doing things.” 

“ Working in offices, ten to five-thirty.” 

"Well, even that. I couldn’t. Father wouldn’t have 
me as a typist, would he? I’d make too many mis- 
takes.” 

We laughed together, and I wanted to say that it would 
be sacrilege to connect her white fingers with copying ink, 
but I knew better than to pay compliments, even sincere 
ones. Besides, I understood her attitude; it was achieve- 
ment this English girl admired. 

" Are you bored with life? ” I asked, bluntly. 

" What funny questions you ask! No, not exactly bored. 
There’s plenty to do; I skate and read a lot, and we go 
out. Still . . .” 

" Still? ” 

" What’s the good of it all ? ” 

" Pessimism is suitable in youth,” I said, rather senten- 
tiously. " What do you want to do ? ” 

" I don’t know. Something different from what I 
do.” 

"Fall in love?” I said suddenly. I had not planned 
that remark. 

Edith flushed, called Fiona, who came to us, bright- 
brown-eyed, quivering with excitement as she guessed that 
her mistress was going to throw a stone. The stone was 
thrown into the rough grass, and Fiona went searching; 
as she nuzzled among the crisp blades her tail wagged 
rhythmically, upright, as if translating all the excitement 
of her little black body. I watched Edith covertly, for 
the loss of the stone had defeated her object. The flush 
was not yet dead on her cheeks. 

" What else is there to do but fall in love? ” I said. 

" I don’t know. Well, I suppose I shall get married 
some day.” 

" Married ! ” I cried. " But that’s not love.” 

Edith began to laugh, at her ease again now that I 
seemed absurd. 


184 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“Of course it is. Oh, you are odd, you Frenchmen; 
you have such complicated ideas. We fall in love here 
and we get married, and there you are.” 

“ And there you are ! ” I said, a little bitterly. “ Yes, 
and there we are in France. Of course, I don’t say one 
shouldn’t get married, but marriage is only — well, regis- 
tration of a fact. While love ” 

I think that for several minutes I spoke of love, and I 
spoke of it as never before; the old, gross shell had fallen 
away, and I seemed to know love as the angels may know 
it. I painted for her love so fine that the lover could 
hardly bear it; I said it was not good unless it was for- 
bidden; that it was shy, mysterious, secret, that it fled if 
grasped too hard. 

“ It comes . . . like a shadow, and it lies across your 
path . . . and if you obscure the sun it is gone. ... You 
do not know that it is there, until it is, and if you have 
seen it once you never forget it. Love is the only thing 
that matters: we make money to gain the one we love, we 
want fame so that she may be proud, and we are pure so 
that she may have peaee.” 

“ Peace,” said Edith, softly. 

“ Love is not the bird that rides in the storm — I do 
not know its name — the bird that flies over the waves. 
It is more like the beautiful peacock in the garden that 
struts and flaunts its tail. It does not lose its feathers if 
they are real and not placed upon a jay. It is the only 
thing that lasts and makes things last. ... For you may 
have everything, and yet you have nothing if you have 
no one to whom to give.” 

“ One does want to give,” said Edith. “ I always feel 
with my mother . . .” 

But I would not be turned, I let my speech blaze into 
rhetoric, I said of love things I do not believe, but they 
seemed true in that quiet avenue, as the wind hissed in 
the bare branches. We walked slowly, she silent and I 
stirred. The people that passed were not people, but 


EDITH LAWTON 


185 


shapes; young couples and old couples, and family parties, 
a few soldiers with their girls, they went by as unob- 
trusively as the scenery round the revolving stage at Drury 
Lane. As if by common accord we stopped near the 
Dutch garden, where a shower of almond blossom had 
fallen into the grass among the crocuses. 

The crocuses stood erect, white, yellow and purple, as 
spangled wreaths of iridescent tears. I bent down, picked 
up some of the fallen almond blossoms, gave them to 
Edith. She looked at the soft, almost fleshy flowers as they 
nestled in her grey-gloved hand. I was not to see them 
again for many long years, and then they were dry, crum- 
pled, as if they had been crushed, and I thought that they 
carried a faint scent of suede glove. Silently we walked 
towards Kensington, then to the Achilles statue, when 
Edith tried bravely to talk of some friends of hers, who 
were staying at the Hyde Park Hotel. But her words 
were rambling, her sentences disconnected, as if she knew 
their artifice. We had not spoken of ourselves, but we had 
spoken of immortal things, and we could not return to 
the everyday things. The consciousness of the unspoken, 
which perhaps we could not have expressed, stood between 
us, separating and linking us, a little ironic in its resolu- 
tion never to be set aside. And, strangely enough, there 
ran through my embarrassed ravishment a strain of anger; 
I called myself a sentimental fool, told myself that I had 
been inflated, rhetorical; I threw glances at Edith, who 
did not raise her eyes, and hated her because she made 
me idealistic, romantic, because she made me slough gross 
tastes, gross desires, filled me with a religious worship for 
abstract loveliness. Ah, if it had been her loveliness, it 
would have been different: but her influence upon me 
was not to draw me to her; she inflamed me for what she 
represented rather than for what she was. 

And then I wondered whether I had been clumsy, 
frightened her by the sudden violence of my impersonal 
romanticism. I tried to talk, and as we walked towards 


186 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Marble Arch we almost succeeded in discussing whether 
Mayfair were not stuffy. 

“ All those mews . . said Edith. 

“ Yes/’ I saidj “ mews . . . everywhere.” 

We had nothing else to say, for we dared not talk of 
the only thing we could talk of. We separately patted 
Fiona, disturbing her in her favourite occupation of 
snuffing the soil, we looked at watches, we commented on 
the cold. But I think neither of us was unhappy when, 
on reaching Marble Arch, we parted. The phrase I had 
in my mind would not come. 

” Good-bye,” said Edith. She raised to mine blue eyes 
in which was no anger, but a shyness new to me. And 
in my own, I think there was shyness too. 

That night in my room I looked at “ In the Garden of 
Eden,” clerk and typist in the Park. I tried to scoff at 
myself, but my sense of humour failed me. 

I spoke the phrase a month later, driven to it by my 
obsession of her, by my certainty that I must see her, if 
only to be sure that I wanted to. 

“Will you meet me to-morrow at three?” I said in a 
low voice. 

She did not reply. Louisa played a minuet, a minuet 
for the Dresden Shepherdess. I repeated my question. 

“ I can’t,” she whispered. And I saw fear in her eyes. 

“ You’re not engaged. Are you? ” 

“ No— but ” 

“ To-morrow — three o’clock — at Prince’s main entrance 
— nobody ever goes there on Saturdays.” 

She did not reply. I saw her fingers tremble. 

“Don’t you want to?” And it was I trembled, for 
fear she might say “ No.” 

She looked at me, still with frightened eyes, as if saying: 
“Why do you torture me — frighten me? I am such a 
little girl, please, please don’t.” But I was in no mood 
for mercy: indeed, I began to understand it was her help- 
lessness, her delicate weakness made to me this incredible 


EDITH LAWTON 


187 


appeal. I hardened my gaze, suggested, commanded now 
with a harsh voice that sued no more. 

“ To-morrow,’" I said, assured of victory. 

Edith looked down rather than nodded, as if I had 
laid a yoke upon her neck. 


CHAPTER II 


HAMBURY 

I 

Even aliens felt it coming, and I sooner than my fel- 
lows, for I longed to shed my alienage, this election the 
result of which everybody foresaw. Even the Germans 
who, in the City, paint their brains with khaki, knew that 
the Liberals would win, and went loudly boasting, but 
conscious that they would have to eat the leek and the 
thistle and the shamrock too, while the rose wilted by the 
side of the primrose. And I am sure that my Liberalism 
was enhanced by the knowledge that my side would win; 
had the result been in doubt I do not suppose that, at 
twenty- five, I could have taken a judicial view. I should 
have been for armies, for Imperial Preference, because 
it was imperial. The Englishman of my dreams was not 
the Radical with whom I began to mix ; I distrusted his 
whiskers, or his smooth legal cheeks, his fondness for 
oppressed nationalities and his taste for ginger ale; I did 
not feel that the real Englishman could care much about 
Chinamen, and I was sure that the last thing he would 
do would be to close the public-houses. 

My wonderful Englishman was short, stout, ruddy; he 
had plenty of grey hair, a Roman nose, stubby hands 
and a fierce look in his blue eyes, when it was not a tender 
one. He insisted, this phantom, on wearing a low, glossy 
top-hat with a curly brim, comfortable for driving, 
breeches and top-boots, a riding coat and, over his capacious 
paunch, a red vest. He never said much at a time, and 
then it was “ Bless my soul ! ” or “ Tally ho ! or “ Dam- 
nation.” In those days he often said: “The country’s 

188 


HAMBURY 


189 


going to the dogs.” He ate enormously, beef, boiled 
potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, also greens ” (said to 
be vegetable) ; he drank beer in imperial pints, and plenty 
of crusted port, which was bad for his toe and impelled 
it towards niggers, Germans, reform feeders, revivalists 
and artists in general. He was ruined every year by bad 
crops, but rode to hounds; he denounced the local authori- 
ties if they suggested he should be rated five shillings 
to feed school children, but sent two guineas and a tear 
to free-meal clubs. He suspected halfpenny papers and 
read them, believing every word they said, and grew very 
angry in a general, bullish way. 

Bullish ! it was J ohn Bull I was in love with, and no 
wonder, for he was the most absurd and charming person 
I had ever met. I delighted in his gross joviality, his 
childish glee, his irrepressible brutality and his shame- 
faced emotion. He seemed, in that crucial year, to have 
waked up and to be trying to get into the skin of the 
English, to remind them that Falstaff was not dead: he was 
having a bad time. For old John Bull had been asleep 
for many years, and he could not believe these were 
his grown-up sons: Bullenstein, on the Stock Exchange, 
and Mr. Bull-Bull, K.C., who had taken a hyphen with 
silk; and he particularly disliked General Cannon Bull 
because the warrior was always hanging about and shout- 
ing: “Hullo, Bull! wake up. Can’t you hear the bugle 
You’re wanted in the barrack square.” 

John Bull had gone to sleep comfortably in 1886, a Tory. 
Twenty years later he found that the prodigy of Rip 
Van Winkle had been “ speeded up ” by his Americanised 
papers and that he was a mere Unionist. He also dis- 
covered that he owed two hundred and fifty millions, which 
had piled up somehow while he snored, that he hadn’t 
got much in exchange if all those tales about Chinamen 
in gold mines were true; to make confusion complete he 
heard they were actually going to introduce tariffs, nasty 
foreign things, which might interfere with his trade. That 


190 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


made John Bull’s blood boil; its boiling point is not low, 
but when it boils it seldom stops until the hunting crop has 
been broken on somebody; if the hunting crop acts as 
a boomerang, recoils on John Bull’s nose, he growls and 
strikes again. His trade! He wanted to protect his navy, 
his religion and his women, in order, and to keep cool 
about it, but he wasn’t going to have them monkeying with 
his trade. 

So John Bull threw savage glances at Bullenstein, Bull- 
Bull, K.C., and General Cannon Bull, flung them a few 
Elizabethan adjectives and substantives and looked about 
him for a body in which to materialise. He had to materi- 
alise if he wanted to vote, and he passionately believed 
that there was a vast difference between blue ballot-papers 
and buff. I think he glanced at the Socialists and Labour 
men, but made few remarks; indeed, nothing is recorded 
of these save scattered words : “ Sharing out — loafers — 

sandals and nut-sandwiches — free-love ” He had then 

but one place on which to lay his bullet head, for elimina- 
tion left only the Liberals. Elimination was his way of 
deciding; he picked out and discarded the worst, then the 
bad, then the inferior, and developed enormous enthusiasm 
for the survivors. This is what John Bull called “ com- 
promise ” or “ making the best of a bad job.” He was 
not getting what he wanted, though he never asked for 
more than he wanted, and was quite willing to take less 
if allowed to grumble; the Liberals were not giving him 
his desire, and he hated them, but they were not trjdng 
to give him what he did not want, and he began to love 
them. He discovered in Edwardian Liberalism the creed 
he was longing for, the great creed which is called Letting 
Well Alone. The Liberals were Not going to interfere 
with Free Trade; they were going to put back education 
where it Was when he went to sleep; they promised also 
to restore in South Africa labour conditions as they Had 
Been. “Not! Was! Had Been!” said John Bull, cheer- 
fully; “ I like those words.” 


HAMBURY 


191 


He had heard rumours he did not care for: Home 
Rule,” which aroused troublesome memories, and “ Land,” 
which always made him very angry, but these words were 
only whispered, while the roar of “Not! Was! Had 
Been ! ” filled his ears. As he liked the roar very much 
he did not trouble about the whispers and beamed upon 
those who roared, his youngest sons, Ebenezer Holyoake 
Bull, and Bull (of the Watermeadows) ; he told Macbull 
that he had always thought him a clever fellow, O’Bull 
that he had a sense of humour, and went so far as to shake 
hands with Llewellyn Bull, after buttoning up his pockets 
as a matter of habit. He went over to the Whigs. It 
is true that there were no Whigs, but something of their 
subtle essence hung about the Liberals, an essence which, 
snuffed by John Bull’s broad nostrils, reminded him of 
Cromwell, Hampden, ship-money, democratic arson at 
Bristol; he had been fond of the Whigs once upon a time, 
of their way of letting well and ill alone, of their factories, 
counting-houses and (a long time ago) public-houses. 
Their tricks in Egypt, South Africa and Ireland had an- 
noyed him, but he was so afraid of the Tories, because they 
reminded him of sheep suffering from the rabies, that he 
said: “ I’m for the Whigs.” When told there were no 
Whigs he flung himself into a terrific passion and declared, 
characteristically enough, that even if there were no Whigs 
he’d vote for them all the same. He wasn’t going to argue 
about it, he was for the people who were going to let 
things be, the Whigs, and he was going over to the Whigs. 

And I with him. I did not take them, quite as he did, 
for I was a Frenchman and believed that people intended 
to do things when they said they were going to do them; 
I had no desire to let bad things alone, nor, for the matter 
of that, good ones, and I had rooted in my mind that, 
as anything that was must be bad, one could not go wrong 
if one broke up institutions. I was for the new law 
because it was the new law; I would have accepted reaction 
if it had been presented as progress. Thus Tariff Reform 


192 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


did not seduce me because I had been used to it in France: 
I had not been born under Free Trade, thus worshipped 
it; had I been a natural born Englishman I might have 
shouted “ Down with it! ” but I was a Frenchman, so that 
it made no appeal to me, for I was a crude revolutionary. 
I wanted to smash, not to build. 

It was not the cry of “ Not! Was! Had Been! ” which 
appealed to me then. While John Bull folded the Liberals 
to his arms because he took them for the Conservatives, 
I hailed them as the iconoclasts. I read the pamphlets 
which poured upon me when I became a subscriber to 
their official publications; I chuckled over cartoons where 
Cabinet Ministers appeared as foxes, rabbits and mad 
hatters. The Liberals were the people for me: they were 
going to “ give one ” to the capitalists, and another to the 
Church (a bas les calotins!), to take votes from the power- 
ful — and there was a rumble in their machine, a rumble 
I could just hear: in those days the rumble sounded faintly 
like: “Down with the Lords! ” I did not know that the 
rumble would eventually develop into a mighty roar, that 
I would stand on a cart near Peckham Rye and be cheered 
while I referred to the Lords as “ the gilded scum of the 
earth, titled ruffians, hangers-on of the chorus — ” as is 
our political way down South, but even as a rumble it 
thrilled me. 

The Liberals had a bold air of activity which pleased 
me; they were against abuses, they did not dislike for- 
eigners, they were going to turn the country upside down 
and make it a better place: I honestly wanted it to be 
a better place, and as it could be made such by smashing 
all the old things I decided to be a Liberal. I wanted 
votes, land, houses for everybody, but I mainly wanted to 
take the votes, the land and the houses from somebody. 
It was, I felt, going to be a great big rag. Besides, Mr. 
Lawton and Hugh were Liberals. And Edith was a Lib- 
eral. I had to be loyal. 


HAMBURY 


193 


II 

I joined a Liberal Club, which proved a temporary 
cause of estrangement between Mr. Hooper and me. He 
made no remark when I aggressively told him that I had 
abandoned the primrose; he sighed, as if to say that good 
grain often fell on stony places. Sometimes, when he 
returned from his own and purer political association, 
he found me obstinately reading The Life of Gladstone, or 
a booklet on land taxation: then he would sit down in 
the armchair by the grate, and do nothing for a while, 
as if this sight took the strength out of him. If I looked 
up I found his mild blue eye fixed upon me and unmis- 
takably signalling: “ The pity of it.” This filled me with 
malignant joy, and I went so far as to murmur “hear, 
hear,” and “ good ” as I read the poisonous gospels. Soon 
I provoked him sufficiently to make him attack me. 

“ All that sort of thing,” he said generally, “ it’s all 
talk. You People, you only want to upset things; and 
you don’t want to do what the country’s crying out for. 
Why, look at the unemployed! How are you going to 
find work for them? With all our home market swamped? 
and everybody leaving the land because they can’t make 
anything out of it. No wonder they emigrate, all the best 
of them ; they’re not going to stay here and starve. 
There’s much too many of us, that’s what it is, but we’ve 
got to feed them somehow.” 

Mr. Hooper rubbed the bald part of his head with his 
handkerchief, peeping at me from under it, and I was 
struck by the pathos of his attitude; here he was with a 
whole bundle of problems: trade, agriculture, overcrowd- 
ing, and the conflict was so complete that he regretted in 
the same breath emigration and the increase in the popu- 
lation. 

“ Well,” I said, “ tariff reform won’t settle all that. 
What will it do ? ” 


194 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ Work for all/’ said Mr. Hooper, delivering a swift 
blow. 

I quoted Austrian and Italian figures of appalling un- 
employment. 

“ Oh, we don’t count them/^ said Mr. Hooper, airily. 
“What about Germany?’’ He quoted most reassuring 
figures of German unemployment. 

Then I quoted absolutely enormous figures of American 
unemployment, calmly picking out a period during which 
there had been a great strike and confining myself to the 
building trade. 

Mr. Hooper, shaken for a moment, retorted, “ What 
about tinplates? ” 

“ Well, what about tinplates ? ” I asked, angrily. 

“ Going,” said Mr. Hooper, gloomily. 

“ Oh ? Cotton is going too, I suppose ? and wool is 
gone ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Hooper, with ghoulish delight. 

Then there was a rumble of figures and I grew excited, 
Mr. Hooper talkative. 

“ It’s all been stolen from under our noses, and the 
foreigner’s coming in and taking our markets. Now I was 
talking to a man I know, he’s a traveller in brasswork, 
he is, fenders and fire-irons, that sort of thing. Do you 
know what he said? Well, he said that in half the places 
he used to book orders they said there was nothing doing, 
that they were buying in Germany — cheaper ! ” cried Mr. 
Hooper, with restrained passion in his voice. “ Cheaper ! 
do you hear? And there’s all your Liberal lot going round 
and saying that if we have Tariff Reform everything’ll 
cost more. It’s a shame, that’s what it is.” 

“ But how do they manage to make them cheaper in 
Germany? ” 

“ Sweating,” said Mr. Hooper, with infinite contempt. 
« Why ” 

“ Then Tariff Reform means sweating? ” 


HAMBURY 


19 tS 

“ It means nothing of the kind. In America a brick- 
layer gets a pound a day." 

“ In France he gets three shillings." 

“ I’m not talking of France," said Mr. Hooper, with a 
stately air. 

“ No, you were talking about Germany, where you say 

there’s Tariff Reform sweating " 

I did not, Mr. Cadoresse." 

“ Now, Mrs. Hooper, I appeal to you," I said. 

Oh, don’t ask me," said Mrs. Hooper, without raising 
her eyes from her fancy work ; “ I don’t understand politics. 
You tell Mr. Cadoresse, Alfred." 

We “ told ’’ each other with increasing energy, we feinted 
when cornered, we found figures and we tortured facts. 
We proved Spanish theory by German practice. We 
whirled in the midst of tariffs. Socialism and credit; we 
completely tied each other up in the payment for imports 
by exports ; our talk became simultaneous, expanded, sucked 
in the waste of money on drink, housing, the hiring of 
barristers by the poor, tramps, betting — we touched peers, 
skimmed the divorce court — we slung heavy names at each 
other. I shouted “ Gladstone," Mr. Hooper fluted “ Dis- 
raeli." I laughed as I observed Lulu, a novelette in her 
lap, and her mouth so wide open that I could see her 
palate. 

We grew silent suddenly, and I saw Mr. Hooper wipe 
his head again, very carefully, as if he had sworn to leave 
none of it unwiped. I pictured him again, pathetic, like 
a wretched little cork tossed on a stormy sea, rather a 
river in spate; nothing was so near our debate as a turgid 
river, flinging refuse into the air. Mr. Hooper took 
thought, then closed the discussion: 

“All that sort of thing," he said, generally; “it’s all 
talk. You People, you only want to upset things; and 
you don’t want to do what the country’s crying out 
for." 

He delivered an exact replica of his opening speech! 


196 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


We had argued in a circle, then. And for one moment 
I wondered whether I, too, had argued in a circle. But 
this did not trouble me long, for I felt sure I could break 
out of any circle, however charmed. 

I felt strong, primed by the literature issued at my club. 
The library we owed to a pious founder, Clogg, sometime 
a Borough Councillor. The aged pensioner who kept it, 
a veteran who had “ fought under William Ewart,” prac- 
tised among his shelves an extraordinary religion, Clogg- 
olatry, of which he was high priest and sole adept. He 
seldom took a decision without conferring sotto voce with 
Mr. Clogg’s spirit. When I came to him and told him I 
wanted books on Liberalism, he smiled, a gentle, thin-lipped 
smile; under his white eyebrows his blue eyes sparkled. 

“ Good boy, good boy,” he said to the young generation, 
then with a rapid change of tone : “ What would you like 
to begin on, sir ? ” And before I could make a suggestion, 
he murmured: “ No, Mr. Clogg, really no, we can’t start 
a boy like that on Progress and Poverty — now, come, Mr. 
Clogg, really — well, if you think so, Mr. Clogg ” 

He interrupted his conversation with the ghost and 
ojffered me a disreputable-looking copy of Progress and 
Poverty. Evidently the shade of the Borough Councillor 
had prevailed. The old librarian’s name was Smith, but 
the club called him Cloggie behind his back; he was well 
over seventy and would have been very tall if his back 
had not been bent as a bow; his stoop compelled him to 
thrust his brownish face forward as he talked, which he 
always did at some length, for he had the rapid, yet mel- 
lifluous flow of the practised speaker. But, alas, Cloggie 
was no longer as lucid as on that great day in 1882, when 
he had stood at the back of the orchestra in the Grand 
Theatre (which he sometimes located in Birmingham and 
sometimes in Wolverhampton) and held Gladstone’s hat 
and overcoat. 

“ There I stood,” said Cloggie, “ for one hour and a 
half, and I could hear Him rolling away like a trombone. 


HAMBURY 


197 


and I couldn’t hear what He said ’cos they were cheering 
every five minutes, but it was splendid, I can tell you — 
and I couldn’t feel my legs any more, what with standing 
up and what with the excitement, and people shoving me 
to see Him. And then the cheering at the end. I couldn’t 
hear myself shout, though I could fetch a good howl then, 
being a bit of a boy. And then He came along, quick, you 
know, with His eyes all alight, and His chin waggling 
up and down in that collar of His, and laughing because 
they were all crowding round Him, all Birmingham, and 
trying to get hold of His hand. ‘ Where’s my coat } ’ He 
shouts, and I can tell you I was proud when I stepped 
along with it, saying ‘ by your leave,’ and seeing them 
make way for me as if I were the King’s messenger. And 
then, when I was putting it on Him, trembling all over I 
was. He turns and looks me in the eye — looking like an 
eagle. He says to me : ‘ What’s your name ? ’ He asks. 
‘ Smith, sir,’* I said (and I nearly said Your Majesty). 
‘ Smith .^’ says William Ewart; ‘that’s a good name. Go 
and tell all the Smiths of Wolverhampton to hammer 
privilege on the anvil of democracy.’ You should have 
heard them shout when He said that.” 

The old man stopped, choked with emotion. 

“ Yes,” I said, “ that must have been fine.” 

“Fine! Why, Mr. Clogg and I used to talk about Him 
for hours and hours. Don’t believe me if you like, but 
Mr. Clogg knew Him. Yes, he had dinner with Him in 
1887 ” Cloggie worked his psychic switch, and sud- 

denly I heard him wrangle respectfully with the dead: 
“ I remember quite well, Mr. Clogg — it was 1887 — when 
you were standing for St. Anne’s Ward — oh — um — well, 
yes, that was in the spring of 1886 — well, perhaps you’re 
right, Mr. Clogg.” Cloggie switched Mr. Clogg off' and 
announced, with an air of relief: “ 1886, I mean.” 

The adorable Cloggie did, however, more than amuse 
me; he liked my being a boy, that is under sixty, for 
he was himself always “ a bit of a boy ” in any story 


198 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


anterior to 1890 or so; he decided to educate me, so that 
I often forsook the smoke-filled clubroom to go and sit 
with Cloggie, and be catechised. Cloggie was bent on my 
being thorough; it was he lent me Morley’s Life of Cohden, 
the speeches of John Bright, Mill on lAberty. He failed, 
to his great chagrin, to make me take away the four volumes 
of Sir Spencer Walpole’s History of Twenty-five Years. 
I was, said Cloggie, wilful and would do no good. But 
the blue eyes, that twinkled under the white eyebrows, 
said he didn’t mean that, and that the old man, whose 
family was either dead or in distant colonies, had found 
in me a sort of grandson. So he let me browse in the 
succulent pastures Mr. Clogg had left behind him, nibble 
at Bagehot, Adam Smith and Mazzini (who was almost 
equal to Him) ; and he forgave my flight from Walpole 
when I appeared with a compact but orthodox J. R. Green. 
And sometimes he would press upon me, almost mysteri- 
ously, a very old pamphlet. 

“ Read that,” he whispered. “ It’s grand, grand.” It 
was usually some contemporary of the Repeal of the 
Paper Duty. But Cloggie felt it would strengthen my 
faith. He was not wrong, for I read with fierce enthusiasm 
in the Tube, at home, when Maud was out, while I dressed, 
in the street as I walked. I could not read while I shaved, 
but soapmarks on my Life of John Lord Russell, show that 
I read while I lathered my face. And sometimes Cloggie 
would emerge from his book-lined bunk and sit in the 
clubroom, cheerfully blinking, while his wonderchild hurled 
the principles of Liberalism, in almost faultless English 
marred by a fairly strong foreign accent, at an unoffending 
speaker who had come from Headquarters to expound 
Franchise or Poor Law Reform. 

Ill 

And that is how it came about that I contested Ham- 
bury. That is, I soon began to feel that it was I, and not 


HAMBURY 


199 


Mr. Lawton, who was going to stand for that shapeless 
slice of country where the old merchant suburbs of London, 
the villas of the clerks, workmen’s dwellings and a few 
scattered farms have made an evolving little world of 
their own. Hambury, which I could reach from Euston 
in twenty minutes, began in the south by being urban, 
grew neo-urban a little further, then died in the fields; 
here and there it burst into smokestacks, while a pest of 
building plots, sown with sardine tins and old boots, had 
spread to every corner; even the elms, judging from the 
notice boards, were to be let on lease. And, not far from 
brooks and hedges, when one stood on a hillock, one could 
see companies of navvies breaking the roads so that the 
tramways, whose terminus was still in the south, could 
crawl nearer to the fields and strangle them with snaky 
steel tracks. It was on such a hillock that we stood, Edith 
and I, on a Saturday afternoon in November, for we were 
both of us “ nursing ” the constituency. We were not 
nursing it very loyally that afternoon, for I had not called 
at the office of the Liberal Association, while Edith had 
pleaded a second engagement and escaped from Mrs. 
Murchison’s garden party in time to reach, by devious 
ways, this place where there were no votes and therefore 
no risks. 

It was warm, for the Indian summer still lingered, as 
if reluctant to forsake the peaceful fields; the sun, veiled 
by faint mists, coloured tenderly the western sky, and 
there still was heat in its oblique rays. Indeed, something 
of the gladness of summer enfolded us, though the heavy 
dews had risen, blunted the sharp outlines of the branches; 
a faint but pungent smell of dead leaves was carried on the 
light wind, and, in a hedge, I could see a large spider, 
moving very slowly in its web, spiritless as if it knew 
that winter and death were coming. But we were alive, 
full of that quiet life which sometimes assures us of an 
immortality of which we are not aware in our more hectic 
turbulences. We stood, very content with each other, for 


200 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I knew that everything of Edith^ her sedate grace, and the 
repose of her small gloved hands, filled me with a sense of 
rest: she stroked my soul, and it purred. And I had begun 
to gather as she looked at me, now a little more eloquent, 
that my dark face, my alert black eyes, my moustache 
and its audacity suggested to her something lurid which 
my words did not belie; for her I was the unexpected, the 
danger, the creature without rules or canons, who was ex- 
ploring her world and daring to question it. She was, I 
felt, deliciously afraid of me. I liked to feel she was 
afraid of me, and to think she enjoyed her fear. 

“ Isn’t it jolly.^ ” she said. 

“ Isn’t it} ” 

We remained silent for some moments, registering im- 
pressions; and I wondered whether in her mind I mingled 
with the landscape as much as she did in mine, 

“ You know,” I said suddenly, “ I like you better here 
than in London.” 

“ Thanks.” She smiled rather archly. “ Am I so 
dreadful in town? ” 

“ You’re charming. But here, you’re different because 
the place is different. You’re sensitive, you see, like the 
chameleon. You take the colour of the place. And I like 
this colour better than that of London. It’s all so restful 
and so simple; life seems so easy; I think of milkmaids, 
and calling the cattle home. Listen — that’s a cow- 
bell.” 

“I’m sorry,” said Edith, resolutely; “it’s a tram.” 

“ Tush! ” I was angry. “ How can you talk of trams? 
Trams ! They murder the world — they and the railways. 
It isn’t like sedan chairs, and chaises, and hansoms; even 
motor-cars and motor-buses are better; all those things 
don’t leave a trail of steel lines and posts and signals to 
remind you what a beastly world we’re making. Trams! 
If I go to hell when I die and they want to do their worst, 
they’ll put me in an L.C.C. garage. Oh, you laugh — but 
don’t look that way, Edith, where there are men. Look 


HAMBURY 


201 


there, towards the skyline, where the sky’s blushing and 
making the cows look black.” 

I took her by the arm, and she yielded, turned towards 
the west. On the crest of the long, low hill, a cow stood 
outlined, snuffing towards the sunset with her raised snout. 
She was flat and, though dun-coloured probably, black 
against emptiness. 

She’s lovely,” Edith murmured. “ What is she 
doing, I wonder; do you think she’s saying her prayers? 
Perhaps she is, saying: ‘Oh, sunshine — send me green 
fields and let the hay smell sweet — and let my baby calf 
grow up until it’s too late for him to become veal 
— oh, sunshine, give him long life, so that he may be 
beef.’ ” 

We both laughed together, but grew serious again, and 
I held her arm closer, moving my fingers slowly, taking 
in with all my hand its delicate, but firm outline. 

“ That’s not the end,” I said. “ She’s also praying: 
‘ Oh, sunshine, let my hide be golden and glossy, my eye 
deep as a pool and my muzzle soft as velvet — so that the 
black bull with a gaze like hot coals, who paws the ground 
and throws steam from his nostrils, shall look at me while 
I stumble by — and make me shiver and yet draw nearer 
as I pass 

Edith drew her arm away with a jerk. 

“ You are silly. And I’ve already told you not to call 
me Edith.” 

“Why not? You can call me Lucien if you like. You 
did, once.” 

“ That was an accident. And then you laughed at me 
because I pronounced it Loosian.” 

“ Call me Loosian. I love it, please, Edith.” 

“ No,” said Edith, firmly. “ It’s wrong. What would 
people think, if I called you Lucien? And I don’t want 
to call you Lucien.” 

I managed just in time not to tell her that she liked 
calling me “ Lucien,” that she had done it twice in her 


202 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


last sentence^ for the pleasure of it. For I was not sure 
of her, I was not quite sure that I wanted to be sure of 
her. “ Nobody would know,” I murmured. “ Any more 
than they know we’re here.” 

“ But if they did.^ ” Edith looked at me with appealing 
eyes. “ Wouldn’t it be dreadful ! I know I oughtn’t to 
meet you here — if father knew he’d be so angry.” 

“ But he doesn’t know.” 

“ He doesn’t. But don’t you see that because I know 
he wouldn’t like it I can’t feel it’s right. A thing doesn’t 
become right because it isn’t found out, does it? ” 

I was compelled to own that it didn’t, then turned on 
her. 

“ But you wouldn’t like him to know, would you, if it 
made him unhappy? You’d hide rather thar^- hurt him.” 

“ I suppose I would,” said Edith. “ Of course I couldn’t 
hurt him. I see what that means; I mustn’t meet you 
again.” 

“ Edith,” I said, reproachfully, again laying my hand 
upon her arm; “but then you’d be hurting me.” 

“ But what am I to do? ” she cried out, and there was 
real misery in her voice. “If I go on meeting you like 
this, I feel — a pig — and if I tell, they won’t let me — and 
if I don’t come you say you’ll be miserable.” 

Edith could not bear to hurt her father or me, and it 
never came into her mind that her father might not care 
or that I might not suffer. She took us as we seemed, 
and in this, I think, was her attraction: she simply be- 
lieved in what she saw; unflinchingly honest, she believed 
others were honest, and now she suffered because her life 
was no longer without a secret. I tried to comfort her, 
for I had at every meeting to dispel her scruples and 
her fears; I reminded her that we did not often come 
together. 

“Why should you worry? We’ve only met four times, 
by arrangement I mean; once at Prince’s, and twice in 
Battersea Park, and once at Kew.” 


HAMBURY 


203 


“ And once on Primrose Hill — five times,” she said 

softly ; “ you’ve forgotten, and ” She stopped 

abruptly, and we looked at each other. She blushed, and 
at once we knew that the quality of our relation had 
changed : it was she, not I, who had remembered, and 
she had unguardedly acknowledged that those meetings — 
mattered. We began to talk feverishly, both together; 
she interrupted my protestations with commonplaces, and 
the forced tone in her voice told me that she was holding 
back an emotional impulse. And I, Cadoresse the ad- 
venturer, was afraid. I helped her, and soon we were 
talking of Mrs. Murchison, and Chike, the progressive 
grocer. We laughed; I even recited a limerick. The 
strain ceased, and quite gravely we were able to discuss 
my role in the election. 

” Father’s awfully pleased with you,” Edith confided. 
” He says you’re frightfully keen; he hasn’t told you, I 
suppose, but he’s going to ask you to come down and help 
for ten days when the election comes. You’ll come, won’t 
you? ” 

” Will you? ” 

” Of course I will.” 

Then, of course,” I said, significantly. 

“ Oh, I don’t want you to put it like that. You really 
are keen, aren’t you? ” 

” Of course I’m keen. I don’t say I believe in the 
programme, the whole of it, but I think on the whole it’s 
the best.” 

I’m so glad,” said Edith. “ I wouldn’t like you to do 
it because — because — on account of me. I want things put 
right, you know.” 

Edith became sociological. The end, not the means, 
interested her; she wanted everybody happy, sober, work- 
ing, each man in his little house, with a garden and some 
flowers in front. 

“ I’d give anything for that,” she murmured, and as I 
looked at her pure, rosy face, I knew she was speaking 


204 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


the truth. We had left the hillock and walked through 
a field, then into a straggling wood. We climbed the 
low hill and looked over the crest where the cow had 
stood, towards the clustering villas of Hamburyville, the 
new suburb of the old town. Little streamlets of bluish 
smoke rose from the chimneys. A mile away we could 
see the tiny station and its model engine, and dots on the 
high road: the return of the Stock Exchange. 

“They’re coming home,” she said; “it’s getting 
late.” 

“ Oh, not yet, not yet,” I murmured. I drew her a’jvay, 
made her walk homewards by a devious way. It was 
half-past five, and the sun had set. We hardly spoke, but 
slowly, reluctantly went towards Hambury. We stopped 
for a long time, leaning on some palings, while invisible 
cows in the valley sent towards us, as they shambled 
towards their stable, the music of their bells. 

“ Bells,” I said. “ I was right. There still are cow- 
bells.” 

Progress, which has now engulfed Hambury, had not 
yet stamped them out. And so, softly, as we waited, the 
bells tinkled, some crystalline and gay, and others mourn- 
ful, and yet others deep and portentous. I looked at the 
slim girl, her serious eyes fixed on the sky; I imagined 
her dream of impracticable hope for all those poor and 
misled, who had soiled their lives with cupidities and 
envies. And there was such wistfulness in those eyes, such 
undefined, greedy love for all those creatures that breathed, 
that I leaned forward, with words upon my lips that, 
repressed, made my mouth twitch. But Edith looked at 
me. 

“ Come,” she said, “ we must go, for the night is 
coming.” 

We parted outside Hambury, where a few lights shone in 
the windows. 

“You will come again,” I said. 

“ I oughtn’t to.” 


HAMBURY 


205 


“But you will? You will, Edith — little Edith, you 
will? “ 

“ Perhaps.” The eyes were veiled under the delicate, 
veined lids. 

“ Say ‘ I will write next time.’ ” 

She laughed nervously. “ Oh, I couldn’t write.” 

“Then how shall I know? How shall we meet?” 

She was silent. Then at length, very low, as if 
frightened : 

“ Very well.” 

I took her hand. “ Good-bye, Edith.” 

“ Good-bye.” 

“ No, not good-bye. ‘ Good-bye, Lucien.’ ” 

She looked towards the ground, obstinately silent. 

“ Good-bye, Lucien,” I repeated. 

She shook her head. “ No.” I held her hand, pressed 
it without speaking. At last she looked up, and I saw 
her lips tremble, form “ No ” — But, quite suddenly 
and spontaneously, I think, I heard her blurred, hoarse 
“ Good-bye, Lucien her slim fingers pressed mine, while 
I bent down, and with my lips touched the glove on her 
unresisting hand. 


IV 

I had two whole months to think of Edith, to define 
my intentions to myself, for I heard, ten days later, that 
she had caught a chill and was in bed, then that she had 
been sent to Brighton for a month, in charge of an old 
aunt, for the Liberals had come into temporary power and 
the election was upon us: her mother could not be spared. 
Mrs. Lawton and Muriel were almost every day in Ham- 
bury, canvassing, smiling and making friends by means of 
condescensions and expensive furs. But I think I knew 
that I wanted my slim English girl only when I thought 
of her as ill, of her golden hair flowing on the pillow, 
of her little listless hands. My pity kindled my love, for 


206 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Edith had not the strong body which arouses contempt 
when it is sick; so like a flowering white convolvulus was 
she that I loved her first in her greatest weakness, as I 
might tenderly have raised the fallen plant and helped it 
to cling once more to the more robust ivy. 

I loved her. I loved her in spite of myself, for love 
of Edith involved marriage, and my old tradition held 
me enough to urge that a Frenchman does not marry at 
twenty- five; also it reminded me that Edith would have 
no dot, that my income was a hundred and sixty a year: 
it laughed at me. But I laughed at it, for England had 
breathed her spirit in me, wiped out some of my grossness, 
some of my mercenary spirit. I was ready to take Edith 
poor and weak, to be poor and weak with her, to bow 
before her, the beautiful and pure, if only she would take 
my humble forehead between her smooth white hands. If 
I had thought of her, in the very early days, when she 
ceased to be a figment and became a woman, as the road 
I might follow to a partnership in Barbezan & Co., I had 
now forgotten such imaginings. My quest of the Golden 
Girl was at end, that sorry, delicious quest during which 
the knight upon the road meets such as Maud, Lottie and 
their like, and knightly speeds on. While the months 
oozed away, my love crept back upon itself, for I could not 
see Edith, or write to her, and dared but seldom question 
Hugh; I was reduced to such expedients as to alternate 
between her father, mother, sister and brother, so that my 
interest might not arouse suspicion, to question casually 
even Louisa Kent, who stung me with the remark that 
Edith was “ a dear little thing.’' 

I think I hated Louisa that day. 

I suffered that madness of isolation which always over- 
comes me when I have lost the treasure I had or do not 
yet see the treasure to come. I fastened on the Lawtons, 
but they eluded me, all of them too busy with Hambury 
to listen to me; the clerks of Barbezan were intent upon 
Christmas holidays and had no eye for the alien; and 


HAMBURY 


207 


Maud preferred to me, to Saunders, the auctioneer, and 
to “ Signor ” Colley, a new friend, “ a real gent who’d 
been introduced to her at Tinman’s,” a certain Bert Burge. 
I had not seen Bert Burge, but I knew he had something 
to do with the halls : as Maud was “ on him like a bird,” 
while he was “ gone on her,” she found a reason to be out 
of the house nearly every evening. 

” So high-spirited,” said Mrs. Hooper, with her air of 
mournful pride. 

I was thrown back on Hambury, for now four weeks 
only separated us from the test. I had conceived a passion 
for Hambury, and, ten days before Christmas, I solemnly 
informed Mr. Lawton that I intended to devote myself 
to “ The Cause,” to give Hambury every night and every 
Saturday. 

“ Thank you,” he said ; ** it’s very decent of you.” 

Bare thanks ! English thanks, or rather recognition 
of my sense of duty. I wanted more, and I wanted tribute. 
I did not have tribute, but a more precious gift was waiting 
for me that night: it was a letter in an unknown hand, 
addressed in good round writing, almost childish in its 
carelessness. The Brighton postmark made my heart 
pound against my side, and I could feel it still as 
I read, feel it long after I had finished learning the 
words : 

** Dear Mr. Cadoresse, 

“ I thought you would like to know that I am much 
better. I suppose you know I have been ill. Only a 
chill, but I had a high temperature. I oughtn’t to write 
to you but — (several words scratched out) — I didn’t want 
you to think I had forgotten to write before we met again. 
I do want to come back, but they won’t let me until next 
month, or they won’t let me canvass — and I do want to 
canvass; it’ll be such fun. You would like Brighton (but 
how silly of me, you know it), for the sea is so blue, it’s 
like turquoise; you’d think of something much prettier 


208 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


to compare it with, but I feel stupid. How is Mr. Chike 
and have you converted Mrs. Chike? 

Yours sincerely, 

“ Edith Lawton.’’ 

P.S. — Of course you mustn’t write to me. It isn’t 

safer 

I went to my room to read the letter again. I read 
it five or six times; the letter was Edith, shy, affectionate; 
it tried to say what she mea^it and shrank from at the 
last moment. It thrilled me, its spontaneity and the fact 
that it was spontaneous; I kissed the letter and rejoiced 
because it carried no scent. The innocent underlining, 
the literary timidity which made her eschew similes, all 
this was Edith. It was all she, the boyish anticipation of 
the election rag, the mild scoff at the progressive grocer, 
the fear lest her silence should have hurt me; that was 
Edith, and exquisite, but more precious to me was the 
Edith in relation to me implied in the scratched-out words, 
which I made out with a magnifying-glass to be “ I wanted 
to.” She had wanted to write to me, and she had dared 
to do it, but she had not dared to say she wanted to — 
just as her postscript implied that she wanted me to reply, 
though she dared not let me. Sweet fugitive, I knew what 
you meant, though you did not say it, and I, who ever 
loved the bold, loved your shrinkings. And I thought of 
her by the turquoise sea. 

Poised against the western wind she stands upon the 
white stones, little girl for whom the blast is too rude. 
Hands muffled in white wool, she rules the straying gold 
of her hair, and the wind furls her skirts about her, clings 
to and presses her against its soft, cold bosom. The wind 
kisses into vividness the roses of her cheeks and tints with 
purple her mouth that pouts as a split cheery, and as she 
laughs her eyes are dim with fine spray; she looks at the 
turquoise sea and it is jealous of her eyes’ blue depths. 


HAMBURY 


209 


V 

And on again to the comedy of elections which so re- 
calls the fights of dirty little boys who roll in the London 
gutter; to meetings, canvassings, lies, proofs and smart 
retorts; to charges of unfairness and appeals for the play- 
ing of the game; to fine prejudice too, to noble fanaticism, 
to generosities and unselfish hopes; to impracticable cures 
for evils, to truthful promises and self-abnegation; to all 
that incoherence and turbidness of purpose out of which 
comes, after all, stumbling and halting, some mercy and 
a little justice. 

Every night at half-past six, I reported at the central 
committee-room. I came out with a bundle of canvass 
cards, sometimes alone and sometimes as escort of Muriel 
or Mrs. Lawton, when they had to visit certain quarters 
of the old town reputed to be “ dangerous.” For Ham- 
bury was getting on in the world : the merchants had 
deserted the old houses for modern detached residences, 
so that Hambury had had to turn the early-Victorian 
homes, among which was occasionally a fine, square 
Georgian house, into tenements. It was among these tene- 
ments I had to take Muriel, who wrinkled her nose at the 
smell of man — food — washing, to stand by her side and 
look confidently at the big, truculent navvies who were 
laying the tram-lines towards the blessed fields, while she 
recorded their opinions, and said the weather would im- 
prove if the Liberals got in. 

We were splendidly efficient; we wasted no time on argu- 
ment, for Hambury was unmanageable: since the redis- 
tribution its electorate had grown from about eight thou- 
sand to twenty-seven thousand. Thus all the canvassers 
could do was to ascertain where was the strength, so that 
it might be polled. 

“It’s simple enough,” said Muriel; “we found that out 
when father stood for Bowley. In these big divisions it’s 


210 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


not worth while arguing: poll your strength and you win; 
at Bowley we polled seventy-nine per cent., which was 
jolly bad; if we’d polled eighty-five we’d have got home. 
You don’t want to turn a vote. Just poll your own.” 

Whether this was or was not democratic government 
did not seem to trouble Muriel much; I remember her 
during that month as a completely cynical girl, intent 
only on winning; her dash had been transmuted into a 
ceaseless and businesslike activity, her talk of theatres and 
dances into a rhapsody of half-a-dozen words : “ doubtful 
— removed — ours — theirs — meeting — canvass.” We raced 
each other along opposite sides of a street, waving ironically 
across the road when we had gained a couple of canvassed 
houses; we learned to work at top-speed with a blunt 
pencil, slippery canvass cards and uncertain electric lamps ; 
we talked only of elections, and we never kissed. Tacitly 
Muriel had abandoned me to Edith, and I, being now so 
little of a Frenchman, accepted her attitude. 

Hambury was a centre of chaos, for I seemed not only 
to be always canvassing, always rushing into the committee- 
rooms for further supplies of cards, to find there a buzzing 
group of women, who checked lists of voters, addressed 
envelopes, scrapped the dead, always catching trains and 
omnibuses to lose myself in Balham or Richmond while I 
tracked removals, or stewarding at meetings, or whirling 
in a motor-car in an aimless, distraught way, going to a 
place I didn’t know, with a message I didn’t understand, 
to meet a man who did not appear. The fog of the election 
was like the fog of war, and I, a private, did not know 
what I was doing. But one thing I could feel: the splendid 
English organisation. The professional agent showed 
amazing mastery of the registration law, of the Corrupt 
Practices Act and of the topography of Hambury; the 
constituency was covered, area by area; canvassers were 
allotted and marshalled; meetings were held in six places 
at a time, speakers changed, speeches toured, men im- 
ported from London, carried off in motor-cars, dropped at 


HAMBURY 


211 


scheduled points, emptied of their speech and whisked off 
again by other cars to do service twenty miles away. Our 
colours were everywhere; our cars, decked with red ribbons 
and posters, let their engines race and roar in the market- 
place, so that Hambury should know we were there, mob 
us, stand open-mouthed and mentally promise votes to the 
authors of the fine to-do. 

And figures crowd about me: Hepson, the agent, who, 
on being informed that one of our cars had killed an old 
woman at Broughton, remarked: “ That’s all right. Brough- 
ton’s a quarter of a mile over the boundary ” — and Mrs. 
Mill, a sweet-faced old piano-teacher, a Roman Catholic, 
who burned a candle every morning at the shrine of her 
favourite saint while praying for our triumph — and Wing, 
his friend Mayne, both Young Liberals, who ’ad a bit on 
ole Lawton and ’ud give three to one agin the other 
blighter. They crowd, some of them just names — Rennie, 
Morrison, Miss Resting — and some nameless faces, ascetic 
faces of old men with side-whiskers, and the sly, fat muzzle 
of a publican who saw the point of being the one Radical 
innkeeper, and very young, boyish and girlish faces, rosy, 
blue-eyed; faces of children who wept for favours and 
occasionally paraded with our poster pinned on their backs. 
And others : Lady Bondon, the wife of Sir Thomas Bondon, 
our opponent, a large, red lady, with an enormous black 
silk bust and a voice which Sir Thomas must have learned 
to respect in his — no, her own house. 

There is Hugh lecturing me because I had called Sir 
Thomas a blackguard. 

“ He’s not that — he’s on the other side, but ” 

“If we’re right the other side must be blackguards.” 

“ Oh, no — he’s entitled to think as he likes, and one 
mustn’t mind. You know, Cadoresse, in England political 
enemies can be personal friends.” 

“ Hjqjocrisy.” 

“Not exactly; of course an M.P. may feel a bit sore 
when he’s being slanged in the House by the chap he plays 


212 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


golf with, but he mustn’t say so. One’s got to play the 
game and keep a stiff lip when one gets one in the eye.” 

It struck me as a little artificial, but the Englishman 
always plays the game, and thinks everybody ought to 
do so. I think Muriel carried the attitude to its extreme 
development when she told me that fox-hunting was all 
right because the fox had a chance to get away. 

“ Not like pigeon shooting,” she said scornfully, or 
hunting carted stags. That’s not sport, but the fox has 
got a chance — he likes a run.” 

Well! 

And there is Chike, the progressive grocer; five foot 
two, or three at most, marvellously active and apologetic, 
running like an overgrown rat about the streets, with his 
little brown eyes racing towards the point of his long nose, 
and a general air of timid, incredibly swift scuttle. 

“ Hullo, Chikey,” screamed the urchins as he ran; “ look 
out, ’ere She is.” 

And then Chike would leap as he ran, and shake wild, 
futile little fists at the boys, for She was Mrs. Chike, Prim- 
rose Dame, thirteen stone in weight, and determined that 
her husband should not disgrace himself with our low lot. 
Everybody knew that she thrashed Chike, that she locked 
him up as soon as the shop was closed “ to keep him out 
of trouble.” But Chike was much more than nimble: he 
developed extraordinary cunning, once dived right under 
her vast person, when she barred the door, and rushed out 
more like a rat than ever, like a rat that a cat is chasing. 
He had his revenges too. 

“ I got even with her yesterday,” he excitedly related. 
“ I was trackin’ removals ’cos I ’ad time, bein’ early closin’. 
So when I got me first, I ses to meself, ’ere’s a chance, 
ses I: I’ll telephone the ole gell to cheer ’er up. So I 
telephones ’er, an’ you should ’ave ’card ’er. And I tele- 
phoned ’er again: ‘Got another, Maria,’ says I. ‘Where 
are yer — yer dirty tyke ? ’ ses she. ‘ Ah, wouldn’t yer 
like to know,’ ses I. And I telephoned ’er agin, when I 


HAMBURY 


21S 


got another — an’ she *ad to answer, ’cos she couldn’t tell it 
wasn’t a customer — so I telephoned her agin’, jest for luck. 
Cost me eightpence altogether, but it was worth it, but ” — 
Chike rubbed his head significantly — “ she did go on awful 
when a’ got ’ome.” 

Yet the contest seemed to breed no ugliness. We did 
not always tell the truth, but I seemed to miss the 
atmosphere of violence in which French politicians breathe; 
I looked in vain for the inspiring red, white and blue 
posters which, when Frenchmen are polling, stare at us 
from every wall: 


LIAR! 

Voters ! Do not be deceived by a Candi- 
date WHOM I do not condescend TO NAME, A 
Man WHO has sold to the Jews such honour 
AS HE derives FROM HIS ILLEGITIMATE PAR- 
ENTAGE. . . . 


or 

I CHALLENGE 

That Hireling of the Church to say he 

DID NOT SUDDENLY RECEIVE ElGHTY THOUSAND 

Francs. (Did you say Panama.^ Hush!) . . . 

That is what I called electioneering, and I told Hepson 
so, but he merely laughed and said that in England no 
man was a traitor until he was in office. I felt that my 
attempts to “ ginger up ” our leaflets were coldly received. 
Reluctantly I decided to help win this election like a gen- 
tleman: our French way is a much bigger rag. 

VI 


And at last Edith came. In ten days the people of 
Hambury would go to the poll. She came, and in the 


214 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


first handshake she gave me, which lingered a little, she 
said: “Here I am.” And her blush, her quickly averted 
glance repeated: “Here I am,” added, “what are you 
going to do with me ? ” 

I did not know what I was going to do with her. Per- 
haps I did not know what I was going to do with myself, 
unless I intended to place myself in the hands of the 
Providence of Lovers, beg it to make or mar me as it 
would. All I knew was that the shy girl thrilled me be- 
cause she was no longer so shy with me: I was as Chris- 
topher Columbus landing on the shores of America; I had 
not explored a continent, but I had set my foot within its 
boundaries. 

This inner life of mine was one of storm, for the tender 
bordered ever on the businesslike; we perpetually drifted 
to the personal while we canvassed, and then again we 
would be driven away from the open gates by the preoc- 
cupation of an illegible name on a card, the facetious howl 
of some small boy, or meetings with other canvassers. 
Those other canvassers ! How intolerably bright and 
metallic was the surface with which they coated their 
jadedness, their sickness of the whole affair; they made 
jokes out of cold feet, lost pencils, electors removed to 
another corner of the borough, things that are quite tragic 
in January. We met Dicky Bell, his brown eyes beady 
with excitement because he had found a street of seventeen 
“Fors,” one “Against” and one “Doubtful.” He an- 
nounced the result at the top of his voice, shouted 
“ Hooray ! Hoo-blastedray,” apologised to Edith with a 
“ Beg pardon, election fever,” and ran away to the central 
committee-room for new cards. An Englishman excited! 
And sometimes we saw Neville, patiently plodding from 
door to door, doffing his hat to the suspicious wives of the 
railwaymen, and gaining promises by the sheer pathos of 
his innocent blue eyes. Neville could suffer rebuffs in 
silence, cover his close-cropped curly fair hair, and squar- 
ing his weak chin as well as he could, go on to the next 


HAMBURY 


215 


house, humbly, stodgily, as if he were still at work on his 
father’s debts. They whirled about us, calling for cards, 
leaflets, window-cards for our supporters, notices of meet- 
ings, all of them, Louisa, with Hugh in her train, and Kent, 
who had given up epigrams because “ when you were polite 
the poor knew you were being rude,” and Gladys Raleigh, 
and Bessie Surtees, and the local enthusiasts, Wing, Mayne, 
all red tie and three-inch collar; Mrs. Mill, always a little 
prayerful; the sly, fat Radical innkeeper, and Chike, scut- 
tling past, with a glance of apprehension for every big 
woman. We talked, we argued, we contradicted, we told 
each other the way, we clamoured for notes to be made 
that Thompson wouldn’t come unless we sent an electric, 
that O’Kelly wanted Home Rule for his vote, and would 
Mr. Lawton go and blarney him.^ that Smith was engaged 
up to five minutes to eight, that Emmett could speak and 
wouldn’t, while Morrison would speak and couldn’t — Fog! 
And in the midst was Mr. Lawton, neat, not too smart, in 
perpetual conference with Hepson, gravely forbidding us 
to give the children pennies, cautioning us against treating 
when treated, reminding us that to give favours was a 
corrupt practice — I see his tired, handsome face as he sits 
with Hepson. 

“ Ward four is very bad, you must double the open- 
airs there, Hepson — and I can’t speak at the Drill Hall 
at eight fifteen if I’m to be at St. Catherine’s Schools at 
nine — you must recall that poster, it’s too thick — the Bur- 
glars’ Cabinet, I mean — Lord Wynfleet will lend two cars 
for the day ” 

Fog! And then Mr. Lawton, in the market-place, on 
a dray. He speaks slowly, hands clasped behind him, 
without notes, his face lit up by a naphtha flare. I hear 
his steady voice: 

“And because we are free we intend to remain free. 
We will not have to lead us the men who have stolen our 
schools, who have placed our women and our children in 
the hands of the liquor trade, who have sat upon the 


216 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


fence when we asked whether they would tax our food^ 
who have not even had the courage to lie. No_, English- 
men, you must never again trust them, never allow them 
to enslave your trade any more than to enslave China- 
men ” 

And I hear the roar that rises from hundreds of faces, 
white, ghastly under the flares, stained by the hundred 
black holes of their open, roaring throats. The sound 
rises, beats upon the four fa 9 ades of the market-place, 
drowns the feeble oratory in the other corner where Sir 
Thomas Bondon is being heckled, for Lawton has hit home. 
They sing, these open throats: 


“ There is a golden Rand, 

Far, far away. 

Millionaires say they can’t pay 
More’n a bob a day; 

There Chinese toil all day 
And, toiling, sadly say: 
Chinee-man he likee be 
Far, far away.” 


VII 

But one night we were lost, in that fateful ward four. 
Having set out with hazy ideas of our destination we 
could not find Molton Street; questions to the natives 
increased our confusion, for the Hamburyites did not know 
their way, they found it by instinct. We were told to 
bear to the left for Granby Street while the Granby Street 
plate showed opposite in the light of a gas-lamp ; we missed 
turnings, retraced our steps, sought for villas in dark little 
streets where flickered the window lights of stationers, to- 
bacconists and cheap confectioners, of public-houses which 
Liberals dared not enter. Directed towards a square, we 
suddenly arrived on the banks of the Ham. 

“ I’m sick of this,” I said, stopping. “ Aren’t you ? ” 

“ Well, I am rather tired,” said Edith. “ Still ” 


HAMBURY 


217 


I looked at her, smiling, her eyes black in the bad light, 
so slight, so delicate and yet wistfully determined to go on. 

“ Only one day more,” she said, bravely trying to laugh; 
“ and then ” 

“ Victory,” I said. I detected a hoarseness in my voice. 
Victory .f* Yes, for Lawton — but did the word mean any- 
thing to me, Lucien Cadoresse.^ 

“ Let us give it up for ten minutes. Shall we ? Let’s 
go along here.” 

“ All right,” said Edith. 

We walked along the tow-path. The night was dark; 
between the gas-lamps we could not see each other’s faces. 
The river flowed very slowly, and, here and there, where 
rubbish had accumulated, a film of dust made sheets of 
shimmering grey satin. We went silent, and very close 
together, elbows touching and intimately conscious of soli- 
tude. Then, near a light, we found an old stone bench. 
“ Rest in Peace, Wanderer, and in Peace Depart. 1787,” 
said the inscription. We both smiled; Edith traced the 
letters with her finger. 

“ Come,” I said. “ Let us sit down for a little.” 

Edith did not reply, sat down, and as she did so, shiv- 
ered, for the night was cold. 

” I’m glad you’ve come back,” I said at last. ” It was 
a long time since you wrote.” 

” I ought not to have,” she said, in a low voice. Her 
face was averted. ” But ” 

“ But you wanted to,” I suggested. 

And so gently had I spoken that, after a while, she sighed 
and said: 

” I suppose I did.” 

” I wanted you to come back, Edith, dreadfully. With- 
out you it was dark. But now — everything is different. 
When I’m with you I feel alive, I want to be great. Oh, 
I know, I’m nobody ” 

” You mustn’t say that,” replied Edith, ” or you’ll never 
be anything. And I — I want you to be something.” 


218 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ What? 

“ I don’t know — I want — oh, I can never talk to you, 
Lucien, you — you talk so queerly — you frighten me.” 

She shivered. 

“ You are cold,” I said. And for the first time I laid 
my arm across her shoulders, held her gloved hand. She 
did not resist; indeed, I fancied that she rested against 
my shoulder, that her slim fingers clasped mine. And 
later, as I drew her closer, I found her cheek against my 
shoulder, light as a leaf upon a stream. As I looked down 
I could see some loose strands of pale hair, the blunted 
edge of her foreshortened nose. She was so near that I 
could feel her breathe, so near that an inclination of my 
head would have brought my lips to her eyelids, and the 
desire of it began to hang behind me, urging me on, pressing 
my head down with soft, ghostly hands. But some other 
instinct held me back, some obscure aestheticism which for- 
bade that I should spoil with a concrete caress this minute 
most exquisite, because it . was the first. 

“What am I doing?” said Edith, at last, to herself 
rather than to me. Then: “ I ought to be away, out there, 
where the lights are ” 

“No, no,” I said thickly; “stay here, stay here. 
There is nothing out there. If all Hambury were to 
become air we should be here both of us — little Dresden 
Shepherdess, that is what I call you; when I hold you like 
this I know that life is good.” 

“Life is good,” said Edith. And later: 

“ I’m not so frightened as I was. I was frightened, 
you know.” 

“Of what?” 

“ I don’t know. You’re so dark — you seem so fierce 
— ^you look at me with your black eyes. They glow like 
coals — and you’re French. I hardly know what you mean 
sometimes, when you talk about pictures — and you’re 
cynical. One doesn’t know what you mean.” 

“ But you know,” I murmured, holding her now so close 


HAMBURY 219 

that I could feel against my side the hurried beating of 
her heart. 

“ I try to understand. But you’re not like the other men 
I know ; they say what I expect.” She laughed nervously. 
“ It’s so easy with them, while with you, I’m always afraid 
that I’ll not understand, when you say that kings are at 
their best without their heads — or other things — about 
women — cynical things.” 

” I never say cynical things about you.” 

“ No — you think I’m a baby.” 

” Sweet Edith, do you not feel like a child, as I hold 
you so close ? ” 

“You oughtn’t to,” she said, weakly. Then: “Yes — 
I suppose I do . . . And I don’t mind.” 

The light grew, for the heavy clouds that shrouded the 
moon were slowly drifting towards the east. A white glow 
oozed through them where the hidden planet hung. I 
released Edith’s hand, let my hand glide along her arm, to 
the slim shoulder that trembled, until my fingers touched 
her cheek. A shiver, a long shiver that shook her whole 
body passed through her, and as she pressed her head 
on my shoulder, while I caressed her cheek, soft and smooth 
as the flesh of an orchid, the cloud became as a film of 
grey gauze, let the deathly pale rays of the moon silver the 
hair of my beloved. We sat, thus linked, for a long time, 
I think, and I was so ravished that I listened to the chimes 
of Hambury Church with such indifference as may feel a 
prisoner for life, when the hours ring out. We did not 
speak, we had nothing to say, but I knew, as I felt my 
knees tremble, that everything had been said, that nothing 
was left for us to do save to put that everything into 
words. 

“We must go,” she said, without moving. 

“ We must go,” I repeated. 

But at last the chimes sounded ten o’clock. We 
started up. 

“ Oh — what shall we do? ” cried Edith. 


220 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I was holding her hands, drawing her towards me. 

“ Edith — Edith — my darling ” I murmured, in a voice 

so thick, so muffled that I could hardly form my words. 

“ Oh, we must go — we must go ” she whispered. 

She let me draw her against me, clasp her close, but she 
averted her face, buried it into my coat. As she freed 
herself I knelt down and, holding palms upward the little 
hands, pressed two kisses into the openings of the gloves — 
two long, tremulous kisses upon the scented suede and the 
smooth, cold palms. Together we turned back, and our 
hands did not unclasp until we saw before us the glaring 
naphtha lamps of the market-square. 

VIII 

And the next night I spoke. Canvassing was over, so 
I hung near the most eastern of our two Roman Street 
platforms, while Edith exchanged dignified and com- 
pulsorily democratic pleasantries with Mayne, who was 
now giving four to one agin the other blighter. He could 
afford to, though we had to pull down a majority of 
sixteen hundred and to reckon with a new vote of six 
thousand, mainly in Hamburyville ; for our canvass showed 
that we ought to win by at least fifteen hundred, and on 
this night, the eve of the poll, a jovial, singing, hear- 
hearing crowd was perpetually expanding from our plat- 
form into the High Street, then swirling back as the 
tramways cleft through it to a fierce accompaniment of 
bell-ringing. Twenty yards away a struggling mob was 
shouting down Sir Thomas London’s men, and a shrill 
crowd of children, decked out in our red favours, screamed 
and whistled them into inaudibility. 

“ Isn’t it great? ” I said. 

“ Great,” said Edith, excitedly. 

We were against the platform and, over our heads, the 
Headquarters man, Federation, I think, boomed out prac- 
tised, eloquent phrases that stimulated the crowd into 


HAMBURY 


221 


cheering, fired off the morning paper’s epigrams, spurted 
personalities to which the crowd responded. 

“ The Tories scuttled when we talked Tariffs. Shall 
they scuttle Free Trade ” 

“ NO,” roared the crowd. 

“ Will you have Hambury boots made by Chinese 
slaves } ” 

“ NO, NO— to ’ell with ’em.” 

Phrase by phrase the speaker lashed them, striking again 
and again at the Chinese, until at last the mob broke out 
into the song: 


“ There is a golden Rand, 

Far, far away. . . .” 

But something was wrong, for he bent down to the 
chairman : 

“ I can’t go on — voice going,” he said, hoarsely. 

“ Oh, try, sir, try,” said the chairman. It was one of 
the ascetic-looking, whiskered old men. 

“ Five minutes,” said the speaker, “ spoken six times 
to-day.” He wiped his face with his handkerchief. I 
heard the old man muttering, “ What’s to be done? What’s 
to be done ? ” Then my heart began to beat, a little vein 
to shiver in my left temple. The blood was thick in my 
head — I remember imposing my help on the old man — and 
Mayne advising me to “ give ’em ’ell,” and Edith, with a 
mouth that trembled and tried to smile. And then I was 
on the platform, speaking in a raucous voice that did not 
belong to me, terrified, excited — saying things I did not 
know I knew, to a great, white sheet of faces full of 
black mouth-holes — and when the wind blew the stench 
of the burning naphtha. I spoke. I heard a roar of 
approval. What had I said? Ah, yes — I had forgotten 
the election, plunged into the future — I had said that 
dukes were not two a penny, but certainly two for a fully- 
paid share — I began to describe Protection in France, m^ 


222 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


country — sugar at fivepence halfpenny a pound — suits 
cheap at sixty shillings — bread at twopence a pound — I saw 
Edith, deadly white, with three black stains for eyes and 
mouth — and Mayne, grinning. 

“ Down with ’em — down with ’em,” roared the crowd. 

I spoke, and on, and on, growing clearer, calmer now, 
smiling back at Edith, pointing an excited finger at her. 

“ They say that England’s going to the dogs — it will, 
if we get the tariff, for then we’ll EAT the dogs.” (Roar.) 

For twenty minutes I spoke, and I saw Edith clap her 
hands with the others, though the old chairman put up 
a deprecating hand as I ended on my “ rouser.” “ I’ve 
come all the way from France, boys, a thousand miles, to 
tell you that England’s the place for men — (cheers) — that 
England is your privilege and your trust. (Blank silence.) 
To ask you not to let it be chained and starved and enslaved 
by a gang of blackguard manufacturers allied with drunken 
squires. (Roar.)” 

When at last I came down into the crowd, flushed, 
mobbed by the friendly, hot bodies, I was glad, if a little 
ashamed of my violence, for was not this violence the 
only expression I could give to my love for this land of 
freedom and silent passions, seldom unleashed.^ And 
Edith had slipped her bare hand into mine, gripped me 
convulsively. I heard her voice: 

“ It was splendid — splendid ” 

Was it splendid? Was this not Darkest England 
I saw? This England of elections where men yawned 
if you said “ Principles of Liberty,” and shouted if you 
said “Pretty Fanny?” England, must you wallow in 
the mud sometimes, because you are a buffalo? But I 
crushed down my suspicions, told myself this great force 
could not be fine or gentle; I pictured the progress of 
England as that of some Roman warrior on a chariot, 
racing the wind, brutal but conquering, and magnificent, 
winning the race, winning. I filled my ears with the 
thunder of the hoofs. 


HAMBURY 


223 


And in the midst of chaos we polled. Twelve hours 
of terrific noise, the hooting of the cars, the songs, the 
bands. For there were bands to bring up the two hundred 
Tories on the blue-decked vans of Hardafort’s brewery, 
bands to lead the Liberal reds from the boot-factory, and 
the band of the Ancient Order of Elephants, doubtful that 
one ; the temperance interest wore red for the day ; eighteen 
Irishmen followed to the ward four schools an orange- 
decked drum and interrupted polling for twenty minutes 
while they settled the Home Rule question with the rest 
of the Irish interest. 

One day of almost continuous din, for the tramways 
persisted in running, crammed to the doors with people 
who speechified in defiance of bye-laws, a day when 
splendid sunshine lit up Hambury, so that a passing airship 
might have taken its quilt of posters, streamers and favours 
for the robe of Harlequin. I seemed to be running all the 
time, perpetually calling at the same house to make sure 
that Thomson had polled, or helping bed-ridden old Carvell 
into a car; also I bundled our people into the Bondon 
cars, having stripped off my favour and bluffed the Tory 
chauffeur. I ate standing up in the central committee- 
room, beside Edith, who trembled with excitement, and 
Hugh who smoked, with splendid calm, consecutive pipes, 
while Louisa in vain tried to hustle him into activity. 

Some little things jut out, like church-spires out of a fog. 
Cloggie, who came up at six, saying that he had polled his 
share, Cloggie, anxious, bright-eyed, whispering of the 
Repeal of the Paper Duty and the greatness of the late Mr. 
Clogg — and Neville, as resigned and mild as ever, progress- 
ing saintlike in ward four, escorted by two score dirty little 
boys who threatened to put him in the Ham — and Chike. 

Chike! I did not see him until ten minutes to eight. 
I stood wearily with Edith at the entrance of the schools 
in ward three. Only ten minutes more ! There was nothing 
more to be done, for we had either won or lost. 

A few yards , away, watching the door, was a very big 


224 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


woman with a red face^ over which fell some rumpled grey 
hair. 

“ Mrs. Chike/’ I whispered to Edith. “ Watching for 
him.” 

Edith laughed merrily, then murmured, Poor Mr. 
Chike. What a shame ! ” 

“He won’t poll,” I said; “she’s locked him up in the 
coal-cellar, I expect, and she’s watching to be sure he 
doesn’t escape.” 

We laughed again, both of us, looking into each other’s 
eyes; I was full of the intimacy of love. And I knew 
now that Edith felt that intimacy. Yet I left her, for 
I wanted to go into the station and, for the first time, 
see the actual voting. An excited crowd surged in it, 
mobbed the clerks, snatched the slips and filled them in 
at the desks, maintaining the secrecy of their choice by 
ostentatious hunchings of their shoulders and squarings 
of their elbows. It amused me, this seriousness, and it 
enhanced the splendour of hard, steady England. 

There was a swirl in the crowd, caused by four big 
men and a load. I heard protests, an “ all right, guvnor.” 
In a cleared space lay a large case marked Hardafort 
Brewery Company, Ltd. 

“ What the devil ” said one of the clerks as he 

stood up. 

There was a breathless moment as the lid slowly rose 
and there peeped out the long, ratlike nose and beady 
eyes of Chike. Then a roar of laughter and cheers as 
the progressive grocer unfolded his little limbs, proudly 
strode up to the table and proclaimed : “ Chike, Thomas 
Albert, 5 Fullerton Street.” 

“ She kept an eye on me, she did — but she didn’t think 
of looking inside the empties when my pals came for ’em 
— she thought I was in the stqre-room gettin’ some more 
when they carried me out. Lor’ ! ” — he removed some 
straw from his hair, — “ it was ’ot in there.” 

“ It’ll be ’otter outside, ole man,” said Mayne ; “ you bet 


HAMBURY 


225 


she saw the van and twigged it — she’d ’ave stopped it if 
the police ’adn’t been there.” 

“ Lor’ ! ” said Chike, apprehensively, and peeped out of 
the window into the night. 

“ Any’ow, a’ve done me little bit for ole Lawton.” 

“ Four to one agin the other blighter,” said Mayne, 
automatically. 


CHAPTER III 


BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 

I 

“Are you going to the count? ” said Edith. 

I shook my head. “No, they’ll only let three people 
in. Your father is taking Hugh and Kent.” 

“ Then there’s nothing to do but wait.” 

“ Two hours and a half at least. Where shall we go 
to?” 

“ Oh, we can’t go anywhere — I’d better find Muriel and 
mother. Mother’s at Roman Street, I think.” 

“ Edith ! ” I drew nearer, spoke in a whisper, though 
the voices of the crowd would have allowed of ordinary 
speech, in a deliciously guilty whisper. “ Don’t go — come 
■with me. We have time; you won’t be missed; everybody’s 
so excited. Come with me — we’ll go to the old bench near 
the Ham. Look, there are the stars all over the sky, like 
silver-headed nails.” 

“ I mustn’t,” she said, but weakly. 

“ Go and find your mother,” I suddenly commanded. 
“ Tell her you want some air, that you’re going to find 
Bessie and that you’ll be back in an hour ” 

“ But ” 

“ But of course you won’t find Bessie. You’ll take the 
tram to Four Trees Corner; it’s quite near the river, and 
I’ll wait for you there. We can’t go together; everybody 
knows you. And — if you’ve got a thick coat, wear it.” 

Edith looked at me, still hesitating; I drew closer to 
her, gripped her hand. 

“ It may be our last chance for a long time, little 
Edith,” 


226 


BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 227 


I left her before she could reply, and as I sat in the 
tramway among the men who were returning from the poll, 
I was barely conscious of their computations of chances, 
their stories and oaths; even the obsessing song: 

“There is a golden Rand, 

Far, far away. . . 

formed but a background to my thoughts. For I knew 
that this was the Day. 

As she looked up at me, with a little fear in her misty 
eyes, a tremble in her mouth, I knew that Edith had 
come to me — no, that I had snatched up her light frame 
and sat it in my heart upon a throne. She would come, 
I knew it, she would have to come, for she could not help 
it, I wanted her so much that she could not escape. I 
ached for her. , 

Half-an-hour later we sat together on the stone bench. 
She was buried in a thick motor-coat; her head was hooded 
but hatless, so that under the rough blue frieze and the 
pale hair her, face was in a shadow, broken only by the 
depths of her darker eyes. I held in mine her unresisting 
hand. We had been sitting in silence for some minutes, 
at first linked and peaceful, then restless, for as I flung 
glances at Edith I wanted suddenly to seize her, crush 
her in my arms, mutter into her frightened ears an avowal 
so fiery as to frighten her more. For I knew the quality 
of this love of mine; it was infinitely tender and worship- 
ping and yet it was cruel, it wanted to conquer and to 
hold. I loved her for her fear of me; I wanted her to 
lay upon my altar a broken and contrite heart so that I, 
I and no other, should heal it and make it glad. 

I wonder whether we’ve won,” she said, mechanically. 

“ Oh ” I surprised myself by the anger in my voice. 

“ What does it matter ? What does anything matter except 
that you are here, you, with me.^ I’ve forgotten every- 


228 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


thing, except you, you, my sweet.” And now I surprised 
myself by my own gentleness. 

“ My sweet, my sweet,” I murmured, and without con- 
scious intention laid my arm across her shoulders, drew 
her closer to me, pillowed her hooded head so that my 
cheek rested on the harsh stuff. She did not resist. For 
a very long time, I think, we did not speak; both, I feel, 
were assured that the irremediable, the delicious irreparable 
was achieved. Then again: 

“ Edith, my darling — I said it might be our last chance 
for a long time. It isn’t true, it could not be true. For 
you haven’t come to me just to go away. Have you, my 
sweet? ” 

The hooded head shook on my shoulder. 

“ I’ve found you — you’re precious — ^you’re like the scent 
of violets ” 

Edith raised her head, looked at me, and our faces were 
serious. 

“ Lucien, I ” She faltered, then hurriedly : Oh, 

Lucien, don’t look at me like that, I’m afraid — I — I 
too ” 

“ Edith,” I said, very slowly, detaching the two syllables, 
tremulous, wondering. 

“ Oh — you don’t know what you’re doing — other men 
have said things to me, things — nice things — ^but you, 
Lucien, oh, I don’t know, I don’t understand. When you 
look at me like that you make me tremble and yet I’m 
glad. What am I saying? What am I saying?” 

There was a ring of sorrow, shame in her last words. 
It stirred me so deeply that I suddenly turned her towards 
me, sat almost face to face to her, my hands on her shoul- 
ders, looked into her eyes, and mine, I know, told my 
need of her. The hood fell, her upturned face shone white 
in the light of the moon, and her eyes were veiled. 

“Edith,” I said at last; “my little girl. My beautiful 
« — I love you,” 


BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 229 

I saw a little tremor convulse her lips, but she did not 
move. 

“ I love you,” I said hoarsely. I’ve loved you for 
a year. That day when we stood among the almond 
blossom, I wanted to ask you whether you’d be my wife — 
my darling, my darling.” 

Still she did not reply. My insistent hands drew her 
towards me, and I trembled as she yielded, trembled as 
she lay close against my breast. I inclined my head, laid 
my cheek upon hers. And my phrases were broken now 
by the intensity of my emotion. 

” My darling, my love — say you will come to me — say 
you’ll not leave me — I love you — I can’t be without you — 
my Edith, my little girl ” 

She did not speak, but I felt our faces move, yet with- 
out parting, as if they clung together, as if they could 
not bear to part. Slowly they moved, and I trembled, 
as my lips brushed the smooth cheek. Then I was looking 
at her lowered eyelids, while my hands knotted round 
her and, as if answering, she held up for my kiss her 
parted lips. 

Soon I had drawn her across me, seated her upon my 
knees. And now she lay, nestled in my arms, with her 
head upon my shoulder, silent but breathing fast. I could 
feel upon my face her warm, fragrant breath. My kisses 
travelled from her forehead, where a few golden threads 
clung to my lips, to her cheeks, hot and feverish, to the 
soft whiteness of her neck, to her tender, yielding mouth. 
As I caressed her I could feel her draw closer to me as 
if some instinct bade her lose herself in the void my love 
had dug in my being. 

“ Will you, my beloved } ” I asked. 

Then, at last, she opened eyes that seemed immense, 
so grave were they and as if awed by some incredibly 
joyful prospect. Her hands climbed to my shoulders, 
trembled against my neck and, as she whispered, she 
lightly touched with hers my hungry, dry lips. 


230 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


II 

Nine hundred and eight! Market Souare was full from 
wall to wall. Right and left, the High Street was blocked 
with tramcars that rang their bells. There was cheering 
and booing, and some blew tin trumpets, some played the 
Chinamen’s song on mouth-organs, and those who had no 
instruments whistled or shouted. Here, on the balcony of 
the Town Hall, was Mr. Lawton, the victor, smiling 
broadly as he proposed the vote of thanks to the returning 
officer; Sir Thomas Bondon, doing his best to smile as he 
seconded; Lady Bondon, monumental and smiling sadly 
as an insulted Juno; Mrs. Lawton, Muriel, both dead- 
white with weariness and excitement, their smiles were 
wan. I saw them, I heard them, but they were a Punch 
and Judy show, a study in smiles, not a group of human 
beings. There was nothing real,' even in the vast crowd 
about me, save Edith, pressed against me, save her bare 
hand gripped in mine. 

“ You’re hurting me,” she whispered. 

“ Do you mind ? ” 

No — I don’t mind anything ” 

“ I adore you.” 


Ill 

Subtle is the air when Eros flies and tell-tale the beating 
of His wings. Maud understood. As I reached the gate 
at St. Mary’s Terrace she crossed over from Fulham Place, 
and I felt a spasm of contempt when I realised that she 
had been a half of the couple I saw from a distance, pub- 
licly embracing. 

“Hullo, Caddy. You’re in the nick: I haven’t got a 
key an’ I don’t know where I live ! Got yours } ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself.^ ” she asked 


BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 231 


in the hall, as she pulled the ehain of the incandescent 
burner. I looked at her contemptuously. This girl — this 
was the girl who had inspired a passion in me! This bold, 
aggressive girl with the sulky mouth, the tumbled, crimped 
hair, the hat that carried too many flowers. I read in the 
loose curls the embrace at the corner of the street — I tried, 
in my unjust revulsion of feeling, to see the traces of 
drink on the lovely skin, for I hated her and hated myself 
for ever having cared for her. 

“ S’pose you saw me with Bert,” she blurted out. “ Well 
— and what about it.^ ” 

I made no reply, and she lashed herself into anger. 

“ S’pose I’ve got a right to go about with who I like. 
Why, you must be barmy if you think I’ve got nothing 
better to do than hang about until me noble lord pleases. 
I’m not so gone on your face as you think, I can tell you.” 

My eyes strayed about the hall, and I thought how well 
vulgarity sat on Maud in this setting of red-papered wall; 
there were dusty hats on the stand; the buffalo horns were 
dirty. And still she raged at me, angry because I was 
not angry, because she could not hold me whom she did 
not want. 

“. . . I’ve had about enough of it, I can tell you, Mr. 
Frenchman, what with your airs and graces, and ma turn- 
ing up her eyes, and pa trying to get me off with the 
milkman. I’ve had enough of the whole blooming shoot 
and I’m going on the halls. What do you say to that? ” 

“ I don’t care.” 

“ Oh, you don’t, don’t you? Well, it’s Bert who’s going 
to get me a show. How’s that ? ” 

“ I don’t care what Bert does.” 

“ Not so much of your Berts. Mr. Burge, please.” 
She pushed hair and hat away from her eyes and, for 
one moment, looked intoxicated. “ Bert may not be one 
of your extra-superfine A 1 quality toffs, but he’s a gentle- 
man, he is, and there’s no flies on him. No, don’t you try 
that on,” she cried, barring the passage with outstretched 


232 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


arms as I tried to go upstairs ; “ you’ve got to take it from 
me this time. I’ve had enough of your old buck, all your 
French gassing about stars, and flowers, and all your 
beastly goings-on. D’you think I don’t know what’s 
what? ” 

And then, for some terrible minutes, I saw that Maud 
did know what was what, that she knew it with a terrible 
clarity which had so far been spared me, that she had leapt 
to the heart of fact while I wandered over London in my 
desperate loneliness, that nothing was too pitiful for her 
to make it ugly. But — but, what was this? 

“ I know all about you, Caddy; while you’ve been mess- 
ing round me you’ve made goo-goo eyes at the Lawton 
girl. I know her. The one with a face like a dry-cleaned 
sheep ” 

“ Silence!” 

I was deafened by my own voice and, trembling, I stood 
in front of Maud with a raised, clenched fist. And she 
stood there too, afraid but laughing, hysterically, as if she 
could not stop. Then I heard a mild voice, felt at last 
the cold air from the open door, realised that some of her 
words and my reply must have reached the ears of Mr. 
Hooper, who stood at the door. I heard stirrings in Lulu’s 
room, and Mrs. Hooper, in a red-flannel dressing-gown, 
appeared at the top of the stairs. 

“ What’s this ? ” Mr. Hooper was saying. ” What’s the 
meaning of this? I can’t have you quarrelling with my 
daughter in the middle of the night.” 

“ Quarrelling! ” screamed Maud. “ I’m just telling him 
off, the ” 

“ Maud ! ” cried Mrs. Hooper, as if she had been stabbed. 
” Oh, Mr. Cadoresse, what have you been doing ? ” 

“ Mind your own business, ma,” said Maud, savagely. 

“ I cannot allow you to speak to your mother like that,” 
said Mr. Hooper. 

“ I’ll say what I like. And if you don’t like it you can 
do the other thing.” 


BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 233 


Maud stamped, again gave hef* hair and hat that intoxi- 
cated shove. The door of her room opened, and, very 
cautiously. Lulu put her head out. I saw her vacant, 
frightened eyes, discovered that she put her hair in curlers, 
And, suddenly, irresistibly, I began to laugh, and I laughed 
more as I looked at Mr. Hooper, severe and shocked, at 
the tearful figure in the red dressing-gown. 

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” said the tragic 
Hooper. 

“ Oh ” I gasped at last, “ it’s just like one of Lulu’s 

novelettes.” 

There was a crash as Lulu slammed the door. Maud 
threw me a sulky look. 

“ Oh — so it’s Lulu too, is it? Not even Miss Lulu? ” 

“ Maud,” said Mr. Hooper, with sudden force. “ Go 
to your room. I’ll settle this with Mr. Cadoresse.” 

“ Shan’t.” 

“ Do you want me to put you there and lock you in? ” 

Mr. Hooper took a step forward and Maud, after throw- 
ing him a look of defiance, shrugged her shoulders and 
walked away. There was another slam. 

“ Alfred, Alfred,” moaned Mrs. Hooper, “ shall I come 
down ? ” 

“ No. Go to bed.” 

“ Very well, Alfred.” Then, as he opened the dining- 
room door, “ You might turn down the light, Alfred, if 
you’re going to be long.” 

But Mr. Hooper was past economy. In silence he lit 
the gas, shut the door. We stood face to face on either 
side of the table. 

“ Now, Mr. Cadoresse, I am waiting for an explanation.” 

I considered the dining-room, the common sideboard, 
bad oils. The only remark I could think of was : “ Why 
do you keep the salad dressing in a bottle ? ” 

“ Well? ” 

“ There’s no explanation.” 

“No explanation? When I find a gentleman quarrelling 


234 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


in the passage — in the hall, with my daughter — at mid- 
night? I heard her say things which, I trust, are not 
true 

This little shocked man in the shabby frock-coat, whose 
blue eyes were no longer mild, did not seem ridiculous. 
I had an English impulse: 

“ I am sorry we made such a noise,” I said. 

“Yes, yes, but why was there a noise? I am entitled 
to know.” 

“ Well,” I said, hotly, “ if you do want to know, Maud 
is jealous.” 

“Jealous? My daughter jealous of you? May I ask 
what your relation is with her, that she should be jealous? ” 

“ There’s no relation.” 

“ Indeed? ” 

Mr. Hooper was not ironical. I saw, as he stroked his 
bald patch, that he was honestly trying to understand 
the mystery. I determined to help him. 

“ Look here, Mr. Hooper, here is the truth. When I 
first came here, I — I admired your daughter, I told her 
so — and she did not seem to mind. But she did not — 
respond ” 

“ Respond? You mean that she did not care for 
you? ” 

“ That’s it,” I said, realising that my original intentions 
would never occur to him. 

“ All this going on behind my back ! But why is she 
jealous if she does not care for you? ” 

Then I lost control of my tongue. I, Lucien Cadoresse, 
betrothed to the perfect Edith, was not going to be 
catechised by this futile creature. In one breath I gave 
him my opinion of Maud, suppressed the details of my 
pursuit of her, but painted her as a philanderer, a harpy. 

Mr. Hooper did not speak for at least a minute. Then: 

“ I accept your explanation for what it is worth. I 
make no inquiries as to my daughter’s conduct. Good- 
night.” 


BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 235 


But I was not going to let the matter rest there. If 
I had still been a Frenchman I would have spared him 
nothing; I would have given him every detail of my vain 
but degrading courtship — I would not have let him ignore 
the existenee of Bert Burge; I would have flung into his 
face my knowledge of his desire that Maud should marry 
Saunders, or “ Signor ” Colley, or me, or anybody. Yet, 
some new cleanliness, decency invaded me; I had been 
French enough to attack Maud generally while defending 
myself: that was done, but now I was English enough to 
“ play the game ” — not to give her away. 

“ One moment,” I said. “ You will not be surprised, 
Mr. Hooper, if I say that I must leave your house.” 

Mr. Hooper looked at me with an expression of mingled 
dismay and resignation in his mild eyes. A compromised 
daughter and a lost “ paying guest ” in a quarter of an 
hour ! 

“ Well,” he said, reluctantly, “ I suppose if you feel ” 

Then, with an access of dignity: “ Perhaps that will be 
the best thing to do.” A note of genuine regret came into 
his voice: “We shall be sorry to lose you.” 

And I respected him. He had found dignity. This 
absurd, elderly clerk, despite his shopman’s frock-coat, his 
petty mind, found it in that wonderful reserve of the Eng- 
lish, in their repose. Somehow Mr. Hooper could face the 
music even when it consisted in such a tune as “ Pop goes 
twenty-seven bob a week.” 

“ I shall pay a full week and leave to-morrow,” I said. 

We shook hands silently, and I think we were both 
sorry that our ease should be broken into by one whom 
even her father could not hold blameless. As I went to 
my room there intruded into my regret a feeling that I 
was not blameless either, that I had not played in the 
encounter the part of a Galahad. Borne on the pinions 
of my love, I hated myself for ever having pursued such 
a one as Maud, and others of her kind. I knotted my 
hands together; I felt self-contempt rather than remorse. 


236 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I looked out into the black garden^ and as I raised my 
clasped hands I was filled with the thought that comes 
so seldom to men, so often to women when at last they 
love and mourn the loss of the first freshness which they 
long to give to the beloved: “ Oh — why was it so? Why 
could you not be the first, the only one ? Why, my beloved, 
could you not have come before, first of all, above all, 
alone of all women, my Edith ? 

IV 

I threw myself face down upon my bed. Edith! As 
I spoke the word into the pillow from which my breath 
returned damply into my face, the ugliness of the past 
half-hour disappeared as a dissolving view. I ceased to 
think of Maud and her harsh vulgarity, of her irrelevant 
mother and sister, of Hooper and his dignity. The 
Hoopers became as actors on a stage; the ugliness of their 
association receded until, on the black screen of my mind, 
there was room for the ever-better defined figure of the 
Dresden Shepherdess. 

Little Edith, I saw you in that minute. The acute 
clarification of my mind recreated you as you were, your 
cheek upon the pillow, your mouth as an open rose, and 
your hair spread about you as if a cornfield had been 
turned to molten, flowing gold. I felt admitted. I had 
penetrated all the arcana of England; I was as other men 
and more, for I loved, was loved. Love had pointed the 
way. And as I lay in my beatitude I felt something upon 
my face, something fine that troubled me, clung to my 
eyes and lips ; I tried to brush it away, but it clung, almost 
defiantly. I seized it at last. It was a hair. But, as 
I negligently pulled at it, it seemed very long — and sud- 
denly I knew whose it was. I leapt from the bed, gripping 
the precious token with two fingers, lit the gas. I placed 
the hair upon my outspread black coat, where it lay, very 
long, glittering. Oh, wonderful golden hair, you were 


BETROTHED TO AN ENGLISH GIRL 237 


She. Fine, pale and yet delicately brilliant, you were 
the North, its imagination, its melancholy and its shy 
tenderness. You came to me, to whom the South had given 
naught save the crude glare of the sun and the bibulous 
ecstasy of passion, you came soft and grateful as the dew, 
master of all beauty and wistfulness. You were fine as a 
razor edge, and as a razor edge you were the bridge over 
which I, the faithful, would glide into Paradise. 






I 


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I 



PART III 


t 


CHAPTER I 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 
I 

When I look back upon the early months of my engage- 
ment I wonder how it came about that I accepted so calmly 
my new condition. These three and a half years of 
England must have anglicised me more than I knew: I 
had long intended to become an Englishman, to marry 
an English girl, and now that I had come closer to the 
English ideal the fact of being betrothed to an English 
girl was not so extraordinary as I had expected. True, 
my triumph had come, my efforts had been successful; I 
knew that I was going to do more than marry a daughter 
of the greatest race, but the feeling was not baptismal, as 
I had expected: it was confirmatory. 

I think that several facts militated against the abstract 
triumph of England through an English girl. In earlier 
days, when the English girl was a hypothetical figure, 
when I knew only that she would be fair and pure, the 
marrying of her was coldly idealistic; in those days the 
English girl was merely one part of my broader career, 
the other being eventual naturalisation, a partnership — a 
seat in Parliament ; the girl did not exist and was therefore 
amazing. But Edith came, and she was not the English 
girl I had dreamed; she possessed the pale pink cheeks, 
the blue eyes and the fair hair of the mental picture, but 
she also had what I had not bargained for: a soul. She 
was not an English girl, she was just Edith, whom I 
would have loved, I think, if she had been an American 
or a Russian, if only she had still been Edith. I forgot 
her great English quality because she ceased to be a 

241 


242 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


representative of her country; she herself assumed the 
purple^ and it was her I loved. 

Moreover, three and a half years of upward strivings, 
of intercourse with the English, of attempts to speak, 
dress, think like them, of watching their games, reading 
their books and courting their votes, had worked a change 
in me. Though still a Frenchman with a marked foreign 
accent, I had gained repose. I spoke less and not so loud; 
I had my hair cut shorter, but not too short; I did not 
wear a bowler with a morning coat and no longer bought 
aggressive “ teddy-bear ” suits. I was beginning not to 
say, not to do: I was becoming English. Nobody will 
ever know how much concentration was required of me 
by the English attitude, for I was secretive; my labours 
were done in the dark, as I always wanted to emerge 
suddenly and surprise the English by my identification 
with them: the French frog wanted to swell in the dark 
until he became a John Bull. 

The frog often thought he would burst in the process 
of swelling. I have still a black copy-book which might 
have been tear-stained if I had filled it as a small boy, so 
impossible did it seem to me to remember the English said 
asso'ciation, not ass^ociation, that villages had no mayors, 
and that St. James and Moses, when possessively inclined, 
were St. James’s in the former case, Moses’ in the latter. 
But I clung to my book, my passport to Eden, read it 
almost every day as a priest, eager for Paradise, reads his 
breviary; when it grew and threatened to become as all- 
pervading as Mr. Hooper’s Five Thousand Facts and 
Fancies, I found it more precious, more necessary. For it 
was the record of my efforts and glowed with memories, 
memories of a snub due to my having pronounced Caius 
College “ Kayus,” of triumph when I alone, in a wide 
company, had known the status of a Bishop Suffragan. 
The black book was my record and I was proud to think 
that I no longer made everyday entries of new errors. 
One week I learned nothing, which was wonderful; the 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 24,3 


following I made one mistake, but I was human enough 
to cheat myself and to forget to enter it. I am still uncom- 
fortable when I remember that occasion, but it is too late 
to atone: I have forgotten my blunder and can do no more 
than hope that I would not make it again. 

So far did I go in my neophyte fury that I altered my 
voice. This had too long been high and, when I was 
excited, shrill; Barker and Merton would, on those occa- 
sions, compare it to tin whistles and bicycle bells, not very 
good similes, which humiliated and angered me. I began 
to study the English voice. It is deep, low, and there is 
about it a muffled quality, a quality of averageness that is 
national; it is neither so high, produced from the anterior 
palate, as is French, nor so throaty as German. I deter- 
mined to lower my pitch, to produce from the posterior 
palate with a little “ head ” influence taken from Hugh’s 
Oxford voice. A bad cold made the change easy, for I 
emerged from it with a new, low voice, which I ascribed 
to “ a permanent lesion of the vocal cords.” The new, 
low voice had nothing to do with lesions: it had been manu- 
factured in seven evenings, after midnight, in quiet squares. 
After I had guiltily accepted the sympathy of everybody 
who heard me, I found that the new voice was popular; 
Muriel called it “ wood-wind ” and preferred it to my 
former “ brass band,” and Edith said that she didn’t care 
what instrument it recalled so long as its tune did not 
alter. 

For Edith was franker than she had been. She no 
longer feared me so much and could afford to laugh at me 
a little, nervously perhaps, as a man plays with his very 
big dog; though less articulate than I wished, she was 
able now to say what she meant, to be gracefully arch, 
to correct and criticise me. It did not hurt me overmuch 
when she criticised me, for she had always ready on my 
arm an anaesthetic hand. But these were infrequent 
occasions, for Edith’s love for me was made up of shynesses 
and delicacies, of unconscious reserves and exquisite 


244 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


reticences; under the light of day it wilted like a violet 
in over-fierce sunshine^ and it is literal to say that she 
feared the day; for once, when I tried to kiss her behind 
a great clump of lilac in the garden of an untenanted 
house, she whispered rather than said : “ Oh, no — the day 
— the cruel day.” But she found some sacredness in her 
love which it was reverent she should hide: once, in the 
coffee-room of an inn at Harrow, I came in suddenly to 
find her softly caressing the grey felt of my Homburg hat. 
As I came up behind her she wheeled about, and her face 
was flaming with shame when I took her in my arms. 

Such moments are immortal, and I think that while I 
have a body there will be graven on some tablet of my 
brain the picture of the slim girl whose hair the sun 
made into his brother, as she caressed the hat which had 
covered the head she loved. It was significant of Edith 
that she should be bold with the symbol and shy with 
the object, for she did not with it have to fear judgment 
or response. She loved Love and she feared it. She was 
woman, she courted love, longed for it, and yet withdrew 
from it, eternally elusive, eternally desirous, assured of 
victory in capture, fearing capture and welcoming it in 
a turmoil of emotion. And along the windings of the rose- 
grown path I stumbled, adjusting the rougher male gait 
of me to the tortuous twistings of this woman-spirit, 
reading assent in its refusals, certainty into its doubts, 
bewildered and ever looking for a truth of feeling which 
could not exist until I created it. And over all this search- 
ing, this analysis and the cold blood thereof, over the 
thrust and parry of lovemaking, the jugglery of its subter- 
fuges, I threw the golden mantle of Love itself, the mantle 
so thick that once under it one cannot see the world, so 
thin that the illumined eyes that gaze through it can see 
the world and beyond. 

I loved her. I needed her. She was of my essence 
and should be mine. 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 245 


II 

For I had “ intentions.” I had not idly slid into the 
relation which existed between us^ though my intentions 
formed after rather than before the night on the banks 
of the Ham, when Edith for the first time offered me her 
tremulous lips. The retirement of Escott, the chief 
accountant, had resulted in a general post at Barbezan’s; 
Barker had been made second in the accountant’s office, 
while my own duties were split with a junior typist, so 
that I became second in the Exports, immediately under 
Hugh, retaining the foreign correspondence. My salary 
was raised to two hundred a year: I had every reason to 
expect that the admission of Hugh to partnership when 
he married Louisa would result in my becoming head of 
the Exports with a salary of three liundred and fifty or 
four hundred pounds. Sometimes I encouraged wilder 
dreams, dreams of a simultaneous admission to partnership 
of Hugh and myself, of two weddings in one week; that 
was uncertain, but after all I was a C^doresse, the son of 
the old founder, and betrothed to the daughter of Bar- 
bezan’s master. Why not? 

There ran thus a faintly mercenary trail over my love, 
but I do not want to blacken myself: I saw that it was 
a good stroke to marry my employer’s daughter, but I 
had never planned to marry her as such. Well aware 
that “ the little God of Love ” cannot “ turn the spit, 
spit, spit,” I knew that to marry Edith I needed money; 
and was determined to make it, but I knew that I loved 
Edith, not Lawton’s daughter, that I would have taken 
her as she was and asked her to share my two hundred 
a year and my rooms in Cambridge Street. For affluence 
had enabled me to gratify my growing desire for comfort. 
I had now two rooms on the third floor, from the front 
windows of which I could see the gay little public-house, 
the busy Edgware Road and the sunset; as I had furnished 


246 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


them myself they cost me but twelve shillings a week, 
including nominal attendance and the use of a modern 
bathroom. I had a sense of property, for the furniture, 
twenty pounds’ worth, was mine, and doubly mine because 
Edith had chosen the chintz for my settee, my curtains 
and my tea-set. I think those purchases brought us closer 
than would have any avowal or any caress, so intimate are 
the things among which one is to live. 

“ I wish I were buying it for us,” I whispered behind 
the shopman’s unobtrusive back ; “ it would tie us 

up.” 

“ Tie us up? ” said Edith, genuinely puzzled. 

“ Yes — I hardly know how to say it, but things like 
chintz, which one has chosen together, which one lives 
with, which are — the witnesses — you see ? ” 

“ Yes, I see,” said Edith, softly. 

“ The chintz is not you, and not me, it’s We, it becomes 
We. It becomes so usual that one can’t think of oneself 
outside it. It’s like an atmosphere which two people need 
to breathe. If we had that chintz we could never 
part ” 

“ Until it wore out and I went to buy chintz with some- 
body else ” 

“ Yes — but never again the same chintz.” 

“No,” said Edith, with sudden gravity; “never the 
same.” 

And, behold, as I write I see not the pink rosebuds on 
white of that very early purchase, but a newer chintz, 
green leaves on a black ground. Shall I rejoice or sorrow 
because one never buys the same chintz twice? 

Edith enjoyed the furnishing even more than I did. 
We had grave discussions as to whether we should buy 
a new sitting-room table or the second-hand and ponderous 
Victorian tripod. The first was cheap, but the second 
was in the hands of a diplomatic German Jew who had 
drawn blushes into Edith’s cheeks by persistently calling 
her “ Madam.” And she calculated cretonne widths for 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 217 


curtains, achieving unexpected (and invariably incorrect) 
results when trying to determine whether four-feet width 
at three and nine was cheaper for seven-feet curtains than 
three-feet width at two and eight. She sat at a table in 
a Clapham A.B.C., scribbling upon the back of a letter, 
and I laughed as she despairingly pushed the hair away 
from her wrinkled forehead. Her one regret was that 
she would never see the rooms. When invited to come 
alone, or to bring Muriel, Hugh, everybody, she shook 
her head. 

“ No — I couldn’t. I couldn’t come alone, could I.^ And 
if I brought the others, they’d think — well, they’d think it 
funny of me, they’d suspect. And you don’t want them to 
do that ? ” There was a note of appeal in her voice. 

“No, they mustn’t, not yet; they shall soon.” 

“ Not yet. Oh, please, not yet.” There was appeal in 
her eyes now. 

I asked “ why } ” but I knew. Edith had something to 
hide, felt guilty, and she hugged her guilt because of the 
romance it carried. Incapable of the dishonest she clung 
to the secret; if questioned she would have confessed, but, 
unquestioned, she liked to bask in private knowledge, to 
feed her imagination with pictures which her mother could 
not see. Her mind was in search of romance; starving, 
it seized upon anything that touched me, gilded it, and, 
having gilded it, hid it as a magpie hides a spoon. She 
hardly knew that she did this; I had to construct from my 
own inferences her delicate mental sensuality. “ I don’t 
know why,” she said; “it wouldn’t be the same if they 
knew. They mightn’t like it — I couldn’t bear that. And if 
they liked it ” 

“ You’d be glad, darling? ” 

“ Oh — glad, glad.” The blue eyes shone, but not quite 
gaily, and I suddenly felt a fear seize me that they wouldn’t 
like it, that she knew it, that we were both blinding our- 
selves to the truth. “ Yes, I’d be glad, but if they did like 
it, they’d — talk — make jokes ” 


248 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I closed my hand upon hers, crushed it, the pencil and 
the envelope within my larger fist. 

“ They shan’t know, my sweet, not until you choose.” 
I almost added: “Don’t be afraid. I shan’t stab the 
picture you have painted,” but I felt that she would think 
this cynical, that she would be disturbed and begin gravely 
to question whether she were “ being silly.” “ Be silly, 
little Edith,” I thought, and, as I thought, grew old; “ you 
will not always find it easy to be silly.” No, I would tell 
them later, when my position was better assured. Should 
I, by haste, spoil the glamour of early days, the beginnings, 
when hands grope for hands No; my precocious 
sybaritism told me already that this was the most wonderful 
experience in the world, that I must not urge on love to 
its fulfilment, for here was the time when it tried its 
wings. Rather would I let it perch upon my wrist, smile 
at its awkwardness and find it graceful; I would have 
everything love can give, its doubts, its timidities, its half 
avowals; I would have its romance, its sentimentality and 
its languor. When the time came for love to fulfil itself 
I would open my arms to it, but not an emotion should be 
stolen from me: an emotion marks for evermore, and comes 
again nevermore. I was no Goth to hurry it. 


Ill 

Reasons other than these rather neurotic delicacies helped 
to hold me back from a blazoning forth of my passion. I 
saw the Lawtons with new eyes: these people were not 
so strange because I could conceive of a time when they 
would no longer be strangers, and, as I understood them 
better, I found points of difference where I had found, 
if not similarities, at least an absence of dissimilarities. 
I knew them to be aloof, self-centred, “ islands in an 
island,” but I had not taken the measure of the hatred they 
felt for interference, of the protection they afforded to 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 249 


the rights of their souls. Muriel, perhaps, awakened me 
first from my dreams. 

“ I like Neville,” she said; “he’s a good sort.” 

“ Yes, and rather handsome.” 

“ Handsome.^ Well, I suppose he is, in a pocket Adonis 
sort of way. Wavy hair, blue eyes and not too much 
chin — it’s a smart face, rather. But I don’t mean that; 
he’s decent, you know, having taken on his father’s debts, 
the old rotter ! ” 

She gave me a full history of the “ old rotter,” who 
was apparently not much worse than his “ rotter ” an- 
cestors. Neville was the last of his line; great-grandson 
of a country gentleman who rode to hounds, diced and 
put up a hundred guineas for cricket matches; grandson 
of a fashionable Harley Street physician, who would have 
his horses and money to pay for his son’s Grand Tour, 
and son of a commercial agent who lived at Brixton so as 
to be able to afford a car, he was on the step of the social 
stair below which is the working-class. The last of his 
line, loaded with its follies and devoid of the energy, the 
life-lust which had made them possible. 

“That’s just it,” Muriel summed up; “they’re going 
down, those Nevilles, and Archie’s got nothing in him, 
except to be decent. ^ He’s got no spirit and he wants to 
do the handsome thing; that’s enough to smash him up, 
for he’s not strong enough to afford it.” 

“ What will become of him? ” 

“ How do I know? He might have a stroke of luck.” 

“ He might get married to a clever woman,” I suggested. 

“ He might. Of course, he’d be easy to manage, he’s 
a pussy-cat.” 

The mysteries of feminine classifications were unveiled; 
Neville was a “pussy-cat,” meek, kindly and pretty; the 
ugly, leering men were “ toads,” and I fastened the word 
on Farr; there were “worms” too, creatures as mild as 
“ the pussy cats,” but in every case nasty; creeping, mingy 
little animals. 


250 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ Well/’ I said at last, why don’t you marry the pussy- 
cat? You might turn him into a Blue Persian.” 

The “ triangular,” grey-green eyes turned away from 
me. Muriel replied, and her voice was thin and cold: 

” Indeed? ” Then, without any hurry, she began to 
speak again, but no longer of the thin iee I had broken. 
I think she seriously discussed the weather. 

I was snubbed, too, when I asked Hugh where he would 
live when he married Louisa Kent. 

“ With your taste for sports I’d live in the country, 
if I were you,” I said. “ I’m sure you would like a ride 
in the morning and you could get up from Epsom or 
Leatherhead.” 

“ I might,” said Hugh. 

“ Yes, I like the town, but you don’t, do you? ” 

I’m sure I don’t know,” said Hugh. 

“Of course, you’d like some parts better, wouldn’t you? 
Kensington ? ” 

“ Got nothing against it,” said Hugh. 

“ Or Hampstead, though it’s far out.” 

“ Perhaps it is,” said Hugh. 

“ But I hear they’re going to build a new tube. Have 
you heard that? ” 

“ Can’t remember,” said Hugh. 

I went on at great length, analysed the merits of Bays- 
water; “ I’ll tell you the name of a good agent,” I volun- 
teered, remembering the melancholy man who had given 
Maud and me an order to view. 

“ Thanks,” said Hugh. 

There was a silence, and I gathered that Muriel was 
looking at me coldly, that Mr. Lawton, who leaned against 
the mantelpiece, was staring over my head. On Edith’s 
face I could see a very slight perturbation; I knew there 
was something wrong, but what? And the Lawtons did 
not tell me : Mr. Lawton was the first to speak again, asked 
me whether I thought the Licensing Bill went far enough. 
I might never have known what I had done, for the Law- 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 251 


tons never told: it was not for them to interfere with me 
by telling me. By degrees only, and from Edith did I 
gather what I did. 

“ You see — they’re like that — if you’re interested they 
think — well, I hardly like to say, only it feels like inter- 
fering.” Edith, too, could not tell; it was only because 
she loved me that she hinted. Yet she helped me to see 
the English resenting my interest in their affairs, the 
influence I wanted to acquire over their course; she showed 
me that Hugh might not know where he wanted to live, but 
he didn’t want me to tell him; he did not want my help to 
find a house-agent; he had far rather make a bad bargain 
and make it himself than suffer intrusion into his business. 
And that remark to Muriel was dreadful: it was, Edith 
regretfully confessed, enough to wreck the chances of the 
match, for Muriel was going to marry her man herself, not 
to be taken by the hand and given unto him until the 
wedding-day. Sometimes I grew angry. 

“ I think they’re very conceited,” I said. 

“No, no, they really aren’t,” Edith pleaded; “it’s not 
that. I hardly understand them myself, but they aren’t. 
They don’t brag, do they } ” 

I had to agree they did not brag, remembering Hugh’s 
account of his career at Oxford, but maintained my 
position. 

“ It’s not conceit,” said Edith, “ but they don’t like to 
be corrected, told things. They want to be let alone; you 
should hear Hugh sometimes, not often, when he’s alone 
with me; he says he’s an awful duffer in business. He’s 
not, is he ? ” 

“ Oh — no,” I said. Then I found a very slight frigidity 
in Edith’s voice. I had not been enthusiastic enough: 
therefore I had criticised. 

“ Of course he’s not a duffer,” she said. “ But he says 
he is, and he means it; he doesn’t think he’s any good.” 

“Then why won’t he be helped? Does he think I’m 
a duffer ? ” 


252 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“Of course not,” said Edith, indignantly; “he thinks 
a lot of you. He says you’re smart; he’s said it several 
times.” 

“ But then why won’t he let me tell him something 
useful.^ ” I asked, and was still in the fog. 

“ I don’t know. He’s like that, perhaps we’re all like 
that. We want to be let alone — perhaps we don’t want 
to be improved. Silly, isn’t it ? ” 

We laughed together, and the chill passed away. 

“ I’ll tell you how I see it, Edith,” I summed up. “ The 
English are always saying, ‘ I’m not much, but, hang it, 
I’m as good as you.’ ” 

Edith’s chief preoccupation, in those days, was that I 
should make upon her people so good an impression that, 
when the time came, our engagement would be agreed to. 
She was always coaching me, at our stolen meetings: 

“ Now, mind, don’t tell father that the Liberals are 
bound to break up into Moderates and Radicals. Oh, 
yes, I know it’s true, that you’ve got a dozen parties in 
France, and perhaps it’s true that we’ll have them here 
too, but he’s — well, I can’t tell you, but he doesn’t like 
it.” 

“ Has he said anything ? ” 

“ He hasn’t; you don’t expect him to, do you? ” 

“ How are you to tell if he doesn’t say something? ” 

“ Oh, Lucien, how silly you are.” Edith squeezed my 
arm as we sat together in one of those secluded corners 
of Kew Gardens where lovers go to. “ We don’t say things, 
I suppose, at least not like you.” 

“ I suppose not,” I said, rather gloomily, and I realised 
that there were portions of the English psychology which 
I had not explored. I am not sure that I have even now 
explored it all, that I know the subtle reactions of national 
upon personal characteristics. In those days I was 
haunted by the problem: “ How does one become popular 
among the English? ” 

“ Oh, you’re doing it very well,” said Edith, cheerfully. 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 253 


“ I’m sure they like you; even if you do rub them up the 
wrong way sometimes. You see/’ she added, with a sweet, 
confidential smile, “they know you’re French.” 

“ Indeed.^ ” I was rather angry. “ They make allow- 
ances for me? You mean they don’t expect me to behave 
properly? ” 

“ Lucien ! ” 

“ I understand,” I said, in a hard voice. “ I seem to 
remember things — I remember what Muriel said when I 
told her that I didn’t see why one might bet on a soccer 
match but not a rugger match. Do you know what she 
said ? ” I went on, more angrily than ever. “ She said : 
‘ Oh, you can’t understand, you’re French.’ That is to 
say, she looks down upon me, she thinks I don’t think as 
a gentleman ” 

“ She doesn’t.” There was a shrill note in Edith’s 
voice, and I felt that I was on the edge of a quarrel, for 
the sweet face was inflamed, the lips were compressed. 
I had touched sacred things. “ She doesn’t mean any- 
thing of the kind. Of course, you can’t feel like — being 
French, you ” 

“Ah, you too, Edith!” I laughed bitterly; “you too. 
You feel I’m an intruder, you think I can’t see things 
properly because I can’t see them as you do.” I knew 
I was hurting her, but I had to go on. ” What am I, 
after all? I’m a stranger, a foreigner — a dirty foreigner, 
as they call us in the City. Do you think I don’t take 
baths? I suppose you think I eat frogs — you’re looking 
for my wooden shoes ” 

“ Lucien ! ” 

But the pathetic note in her voice did not move me, I 
was too angry to respect the tears in her eyes. 

” What do you want? A flat-brimmed topper? Or shall 
I shrug my shoulders and scream ‘ Mon Dieu’? Shall I? 
Yes — look — look, watch me shrugging my shoulders.” 

As I write I am two men. The writer is calm, almost 
taciturn, owns a bulldog and this morning’s Times ' — but the 


254 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


other, the dead one, is a dark young Frenchman who stands 
in Kew Gardens, near the plantation; he faces a slim, 
golden-haired girl, blue clad against the grey-blue sky. 
And while she clasps her hands together, while tears roll 
down her flushed cheeks, he shrugs his shoulders again and 
again, waves his hands; he grins, he laughs maniacally, 
he is maddened by his sense of injury, by his sense of 
exclusion, he feels like a pariah dog driven away with 
stones and sticks from the homes of men. And all that 
because he is not an Englishman, because the English 
won’t accept him for one. 

“ Lucien, Lucien,” Edith wailed. She put out a trem- 
bling hand. My shoulders still worked convulsively ; I 
could not stop, they shrugged naturally, and I laughed. 
I could not restrain the hysterical ring of my laughter. 
I thrust the hair away from my forehead, the movement 
of my shoulders became less, and suddenly I saw myself 
as ridiculous, became cool, then conscious that I had done 
a terrible thing: I had hurt her, for the first time made 
her cry. 

“ Edith 1,” I faltered, “ I — what have I done? ” 

The hand was still extended. I looked round hurriedly; 
there was no one near us. I led Edith towards a group 
of chairs; she followed, still weeping, but quite silently. 
There we sat for several minutes, while I held and fondled 
the little, quivering hand. At last she ceased to cry, looked 
at me with immense, tragic eyes. 

“Edith,” I said, gravely, “can you forgive me? Can 
you ever forget this; care for me again? ” 

She pressed my hand hard, but did not speak. A last 
sob escaped her. 

“ I don’t know what seized me — I lost my head, I acted 
like a cad ” 

“ Dear, no ” 

“ I did. I lost my temper, and then I lost my head. 
I was so angry because the English wouldn’t have me — 
and I did just the things that make them turn me away.” 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 255 


“ I won’t ever turn you away,” said Edith, in a low 
voice. “ Never — Lucien.” 

We looked at each other sadly, rich in experience now, 
and I vaguely felt that the hateful incident had united 
as much as it parted us, for I had ceased to be the mag- 
nificent, romantic Lucien Cadoresse; I had shown myself 
as a human and weak thing; because I was weak the 
mother in Edith was coming out to fondle and heal 
me. 

“ I understand what you feel,” she said. Then, gently, 
as if she reproved a child: “You mustn’t let yourself go, 
dear; I know it’s hard, but you must be patient, you must 
learn. If you want to be like us — I don’t know why you 
want to — you must be very quiet. You will, dear, won’t 
you.^ ” 

I pressed the hand. Then: 

“ I hardly know how to explain. You’re the splendid 
people of the earth, for me. You’re the handsomest race, 
you’re strong, and yet gentle ; you never swerve from 
your purpose, you never know when you’re beaten, and if 
you are beaten you take it well. You’re truthful, honoura- 
ble — I want to be like you ” 

“ I know, dear — I know ” 

“ And I can’t quite — I’m excitable, and a sort of despair 
seizes me, for I feel I’ll never he like you, never be one 
of you ” 

“ Never mind, dear, if you don’t. But you will, you 
will.” 

I looked long at the lovely rosy cheeks, the glittering 
hair, the blue eyes that met mine so indulgently. Then, 
after a quick glance to the right and left, I bent down, 
pressed my lips to the back of the smooth hand, pressed 
them long, humbly, hopefully, as if by the act of worship 
I cleansed myself of all those traits which made me an 
alien. As if my feeling had passed into her body Edith 
softly laid her other hand upon my head. Gently she 
stroked my hair, and I was soothed; I wanted her to take 


256 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


my head upon her breast and, with almost imperceptible 
caresses, smooth all my pain away. At last she spoke. 

“ Come, dear, don’t think about it — let’s go and see the 
orchids.” 

We went into the hothouse. Though the air outside was 
warm, here was another warmth. I closed the double 
glass doors and, for some moments, stood inhaling, taking 
in through the pores of my skin the heavy, hot moisture. 
Before my eyes were the palm trees, the bamboos, the fat, 
crawling and gliding plants with the thick leaves that 
were soft and dank as wet flesh. Climbing about a post 
was some tropical string hung all over with fierce, purple 
blossoms, and there were squat growths that wanted to 
burst out of their own bosoms, so congested were they with 
their cribbed energy. The yellow eyes of the waterflowers 
stared out of the pool. 

We stood side by side in the steamy haze, at the foot 
of the bamboos that reared up like the gouty fingers of 
some Malay giant, and as we breathed our lungs were filled 
with the oppressive air, air hot and languorous, laden with 
the scents of herb that rots in the water, of blooms that 
fight for predominance. When the doors behind us opened, 
the air did not move: it slunk about us, softly pawing our 
faces with moist velvet, and as we walked it gave way 
like some deep cushion, closing behind and stifling us. The 
wildness of the jungle was in the scents of the flowers, 
while the swamp spoke, drawled out some contemptuous 
message through the reek of the wet earth. It was the 
most ancient earth, fed of the dead it had swallowed alive, 
and the wetness of its giant tongue lay over its black 
clots. 

We passed a tree all edged with the fire of scarlet cones ; 
about the base of another the moss was rising like a green 
and never ebbing tide; there was a mop of streamers so 
fine and so pale that no mermaid seen through shallow water 
could have trailed behind her as she swam a greener golden 
mane. We did not, we could not speak, though I heard 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 257 

the voices, the Cockney voices of other couples; we could 
not criticise, we had to feel, and the suck of the jungle was 
about our feet. At last we stopped in front of an orchid 
that stood alone. Upon a thick stalk it carried green 
sepals that glittered as painted metal, sepals that opened 
to hold the pale rose flowers. One I remember, large as 
a man’s hand; its edges curled back to show that the 
rosiness of the rim melted by incredibly fine gradations 
into white absolute; from its heart protruded a long red 
pistil. 

“ Look,” I whispered. 

Edith gazed at the thing, then I felt her draw back. 

“ Oh ” she murmured. ” It’s lovely — but — I’m a 

fool, I’m afraid of it.” 

I understood what Edith felt, for I suddenly knew what 
this thing was; I remembered what I had read of the 
fly-eater. I saw that its lower edge hung like a lip, that 
its upper edge was without a curl; I saw that it was not 
a flower but a mouth, a white mouth, with a long red 
tongue. And as I looked at it I fancied that I saw it move, 
move with indomitable deliberation. I put out my hand, 
and, while Edith gave a stifled cry, touched the lower lip. 

A faint shudder seemed to pass through the flower, the 
red tongue bent towards me, and under my fingers was 
some movement in the warm, white blossom. Edith 
snatched at my arm. 

“It’s alive, it’s alive,” she gasped; “come away, come 
away.” 

But the flower did not, as I half expected, follow my 
hand with its devouring white mouth. It sat upon its 
green throne like a sultana on a green couch, whose eyes 
do not condescend to consider the creature that must be 
her victim. 

I would not move. The passionate scents oozed into 
my brain. 

“Look,” I murmured; “this is not England, this is the 
earth. I smell the scents of the forests that grow in the 


258 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


water, and there are snakes in the moss, poisonous insects, 
plants which it is death to touch. Look, they’re alive, all 

of them, fighting for life ” 

“ Lucien ! ” 

. . fighting for life, crawling and struggling and 
climbing, and snatching earth and gorging themselves with 
water, drinking one another’s blood ! It’s India, Borneo ! 
And look, how they embrace and roll, how they kiss as they 
kill. You — ^you’re a begum — there’s jasmine in your hair. 
Where are your brass armlets.^ ” 

I seized her wrist. She stared at me, and her skin 

was the colour of cream, all the rose had fled from her 

cheeks. My eyes, mechanically watchful, told me that we 
were hidden by the bamboos. I threw both arms about 
her, and as I drew her to me there was no violence in my 
grasp, but a slow, resistless pressure, as if my arms were 
long, green streamers, cast about some ready prey. As I 
kissed her warm, pallid lips, my nostrils were filled with 
the steamy scents that rose about us, swathed us in warm 
veils. As we kissed the jungle enfolded us, motionless and 
yet latently, violently alive. 

Edith seemed to sway in my arms, did not reply when 
I told her to kiss me. My head began to swim, and I 
did not see her face, I saw a white blur like the pale 

mouth on the stalk. Then I saw her eyes dark as those 

pools, and I saw them as I bent down to kiss her again. 
As we clung together I moved, and something soft touched 
my neck. I leaped aside and, though it was only a fat, 
warm leaf had brushed me, found that I was shuddering. 

“ Take me away,” Edith whispered. “ I’m fainting — I 
must go.” 


IV 

If I could have stayed with Edith in the jungle the 
spirit of England could not have touched me. The jungle 
would have been too primitive, too insidiously sensuous to 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 259 


allow any gross nationalism to thrive. But we had to 
struggle^ in our delighted fear, away from the seduction of 
the universal earth, to go back to roaring London, to make 
of the jungle an episode. For I did not see Edith very 
often, and then only for a few minutes alone, or for longer 
periods under the eyes of those strangers, her family. In- 
deed, in that year of our engagement, we only escaped 
three times into the country, on Saturday afternoons when 
Edith came to me, staggering under the weight of a lie, 
an Eve driven out of Eden and carrying her shame. But 
those few afternoons explained her to me, her harmony 
and her variety. For me Kew had stated together her 
romanticism and that of her race. 

Edith had been afraid of the hothouse and its silent 
inmates, while they woke in me a peculiar appetite; that 
which to me was acrid was to her merely terrifying; she 
saw life as a beautiful rolling plain (the life of every day), 
with high blue mountains in the distance (the life of 
romance), but she was disturbed if she met angry rocks, 
red with the blood they had lost as they forced their 
way through the earth, or torrents that respected not 
their banks. She wanted, as I did, adventure, not the 
adventure of the wild beast that snuffs its prey and, 
panting, hunts it down, but stately adventure, knights and 
ladies, sacrifice, heroism, verse, song and tears. Thus it 
is not wonderful that there was between us a clash, for I 
am not romantic: I am lyrical; I do not want beautiful 
things to make me glow, I want to glow when I see common 
things. But Edith’s romanticism was very beautiful to me. 
It was the romanticism of Rossetti, or Burne-Jones, the 
romanticism of Dumas, Lamartine and Walter Scott. It 
was cold, but cold as are snowy mountains because they 
are high. Edith’s coldness was her purity, and often I 
lay abased before that purity — though I loved it as a for- 
eign, an impossible ideal. For it cleansed me when I 
touched it; after I had spoken to her I was absolved. 
Purity, which is so seldom informed by charity, so often 


260 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


narrow, ignorant, harsh, intolerably cruel, caused her not 
to turn away from pitch lest she might be defiled but to 
assume such an attitude that she did not know the pitch 
was there. Her quality was one of aloofness; it was the 
things she did not do which mattered, things that were 
not done by her people. Edith was Edith first of all, but 
she was also the English girl, and like other English girls 
she shrank from lies, from deceit, from boasting; she did 
not deny her Creator, she respected the things that are, 
except those which hurt. For her hands were open to the 
world. She was of her people, calm, sober and distant, 
yet tender and ready to love, because, like them, she placed 
love upon a pedestal. 

“ Why do you love me? ” I asked her. 

“ How can I tell? ” Her happy smile said she did not 
want to know. 

“ I know what I love in you — I’ve told you.” 

Tell me again,” she whispered. 

“ I will — always,” I vowed; “ but tell me too.” 

“ Tell me,” she repeated, like an obstinate child. 

I bent over her, whispered to her the eternal love poem, 
full of the anxious cry of the desirous body, the greedy 
clamour for a blending of souls. But I, too, wanted to 
hear her voice raised for me. I wanted my song of songs. 

“ I don’t know why,” she said at length. “ The first 
time I saw you I hardly dared talk to you, but I loved 
your black eyes.” 

Why?” 

“ They glowed — I was frightened — I’d never seen eyes 
like that.” 

“ Only my eyes, then? ” 

She hesitated, flung me a shy glance. “ No, of course 
not. It was the things you said, things one didn’t expect 
And you talked about pictures, books — people hadn’t talked 
to me like that before.” 

" I was different, then? ” I said, greedily. 

“ Yes, you seemed to care for me — that was different.” 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 26l 


As I closed my hand over hers I think I understood 
her and with her all those Englishwomen who are always 
seeking for something different. Noble Englishmen, I love 
you, and you are not quite unworthy of your women, but 
you don’t love them enough. You don’t tell them often 
enough that you love them, you don’t tell them they’re 
beautiful, you don’t analyse and appreciate them as you 
do fine horses. Because you don’t, inch by inch, praise 
them, because you cannot value every colour in their eyes, 
every shadow in their skin, because you can’t see that their 
hands are like sprays of fern, because you can’t even tell 
them that they are pure, gentle, devoted, they droop. The 
plant of love must be watered with praise, with flattery. 
The Englishwoman withers because you don’t love her 
enough, and then, as Edith, she seeks romance, the new, 
the strange: if it does not come to her she dies without 
having ever known what she wanted. Edith, like her 
sisters, wanted romance: vows that might be false but were 
beautiful, high hopes doomed to disaster and high en- 
deavour to achieve the impossible. Her soul cried out for 
wings, and because it thought I had wings it came to me. 

Perhaps I had wings, but I was also of the earth. I 
confess without hesitation that the loftiness of my love did 
not transmute me into a new being. Though intolerably 
ashamed of past adventures, because they lacked the flne- 
ness I had come to know, the very quality of my love still 
urged me to the sources of further shame. An obscure 
sybaritism drove me towards the coarse, so that I might 
have contrast in my mind when Edith stood before me 
in her remoteness from all that is ugly; and on those 
heights of undefined idealism the air was rarefied: I had 
to come down to earth. If I had not loved Edith I could 
have looked at no other woman, and I attempt no paradox 
when saying that love inclines the heart to universality. 
I loved her, was so saturated with her that I radiated 
love. She became the intermedium between womankind 
and me. 


262 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


• V 

If I loved Edith as a stranger, I loved her more as 
she became a familiar thing, as her mind responded to 
my efforts. I had guessed at its reserves, and now it 
began to unfold, for I had to win her trust to gain it. 
She was not expansive; her confidences were not akin to 
a light woman, whom any man may approach, but to 
some sleeping princess between whom and the knight a 
thick forest interposes. And now I began to see her, 
for I had ridden through the forest, climbed the castle 
stairs. It was July. We sat in the shadow of a hedge 
in a field between Harrow and Pinner. The rutty little 
path, broken by stiles, ran across the field, so that the 
many who passed, working men looking for a place to 
sleep in, hurrying daughters of the farmers making for 
home from the Harrow shops, and young couples, arm- 
in-arm or hand-in-hand, saw us only as a blotch of light 
blue and light grey. It was hot, the sun sat high, and 
over the hedges I saw that the sky was like a slate, for 
this was England, where a little mist always refines the 
brutal brilliancy of the air. So we sat limply, our warm 
hands touching but too listless to clasp. I noted details 
round me, the ugly railway bridge, a few fields away, and 
the glittering snakes of the railway line ; the hedges tangled 
with flowering blackberry brambles; daisies, poppies, little 
blue and mauve flowers; a beetle struggling on its back, 
and the light patches of sunshine in the grass about us ; the 
patch of light which gave Edith one burlesque red cheek. 

“ It is hot,” I murmured. “ How many miles to 
Pinner.^ ” 

Edith did not reply at once; she played with a blade of 
grass. Then : 

“How many miles to Babylon? 

Three-score and ten. 

Can we get there by candle-light? 

Yes, and back again.” 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 263 


I made no comment. It was not the first nonsense 
rhyme I had heard, but it stirred me, for the French have 
no nonsense rhymes, and this peculiar English form of 
poetry always struck me as wistful; it held the vague 
idealism of the North, it meant to me that here was a 
soul struggling with a brain. And then I found I was 
forgetting Edith, that the North was on me — Andersen 
— the red shoes — the North came to me out of the mist, 
wooing me with melancholic grey eyes before which my 
bold black ones shamedly closed. 

“What are you thinking of?” she asked, and now was 
smiling. “ Do you think that silly ? ” 

“ No. It’s wonderful — it’s like rain upon a loch.” 

“ I don’t understand.” 

“ No more do I. But what does it matter? We 
feel.” 

“ We feel,” said Edith, dreamily. 

' I took her hand, drew her down; we lay side by side, 
our heads pillowed on a grass-grown hillock at the base of 
an oak. When I spoke again I was inconsequent. 

“ I have done it again,” I said, “ and I don’t care. It’s 
too hot.” 

“What have you done again? ” asked Edith. 

“ Put my feet in the dish. I mean — oh, of course, you 
laugh. I’ve put my foot in it.” 

Edith apologised for having laughed. “ It was so 
French,” she said. Then she begged to be told what I 
had done with those idiomatic feet of mine. 

“ I’ve offended your family again — I always shall.” 

“ Cheer up. But what did you do, anyway ? They 
aren’t sulking, so it can’t be much.” 

“ Last Sunday your mother was there ; she wore a blue 
silk dress and a large hat with a curling blue feather. 
She looked so pretty with her rosy cheeks and those 
triangular eyes — well, you can laugh, they are triangular, 
like Muriel’s.” 

“ I suppose mine are triangular,” said Edith. 


264 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ No.” I took her chin, turned her face to me. “ They 
are just sapphires; you haven’t got that narrowness on 
one side between the eyelids which makes the triangle. 
They’re sapphires, my delight — don’t be shy, don’t hide 
them even with lids as delicate as roseleaves.” I kissed 
her eyes, one after the other, gently, as if afraid to bruise 
the roseleaves. But my mind was filled with my mis- 
behaviour. “ Triangular, yes. But I didn’t tell your 
mother her eyes were triangular; I don’t know what she 
would have said if I had. What I did say was, ‘ What 
a beautiful frock, Mrs. Lawton ! I’m sure you must dress 
at Worth’s.’ ” 

“Well, what did she say?” Edith was serious. She, 
too, did not like my remark. 

” She hardly said anything. She said, ‘ I’m glad you 
like it,’ and at once talked of something else, the Eton 
and Harrow match, I think. She didn’t seem displeased, 
but then she never does, and I felt — I don’t know quite 
what I felt, but what I do feel with English people — a 
sort of draught.” 

“ Oh,” said Edith, lightly ; “ you’re making too much 
of it. Still ” 

“ Still what? ” I looked her full in the eyes. “ Come, 
tell me.” 

“ She mayn’t have liked ...” said Edith, reluctantly. 
“ You see, something like this. She may not want to be 
criticised.” 

“ Yes,” I grumbled, “ I suppose I ought to know that 
by now.” 

“ And then you spoke of Worth. Well, she can’t afford 
Worth, you must know that ” 

” I know, but how was I to express what I meant? ” 

” She didn’t want you to express it. And perhaps she 
thought you were making fun of her when you spoke of 
Worth.” 

“ Edith ! ” This idea shocked me. Make fun of Mrs. 
Lawton ! And the attitude was incredible unless I accepted 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 265 


that in Lawtonian circles peaks of conceit rose up from a 
morass of humility. 

But Edith went on talking, not very lucidly, for she 
was trying to defend her people and her family without 
attacking me and mine. She tried to translate feelings 
into words, failed because English people have no chance 
to practise this art ; but I think I understood, because 
prepared by experience, the humility that lies behind Eng- 
lish pride, the chronic belief the English hold that you 
don’t really think much of them. The North! I thought 
of Murchison, one of Barbezan’s clerks, a Yorkshireman, 
of his customary reply when congratulated: “ D’you mean 
it? ” The English soul holds two St. Pauls, the unre- 
generate and the converted. 

As we lay there side by side and gazed into the hot 
heavens, I was just conscious of the burning glow in 
Edith’s sunlit hair, for I thought of yet another recent 
scene. I had been talking to Muriel on the balcony, on 
Sunday afternoon. We were friends, we two, for a sexless- 
ness had come to part us and was joining us as if we were 
boys. As she sat on the parapet she played with a little 
black bag, tossing it in the air and catching it. Once she 
nearly missed it. 

“ You’ll lose it,” I warned her. 

“ It doesn’t matter, it’s so old. I must buy another 
to-morrow, and I’m as broke as broke.” 

“ How much do they cost ? ” 

“ I think sixteen and six.” 

“ Sixteen and six ! I know where to get one like that in 
the City for ten shillings net.” 

“ Indeed? that’s cheap.” Muriel did not seem in- 
terested. 

“If I were you I’d come down to the City. It’s worth 
it.” 

There was a silence and I felt guilty, for I had not been 
able to repress the “ If I were you ” against which Edith 
had warned me. 


266 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ Oh, I might. Still it’s too much fag ” 

“ Let me get you one/’ I volunteered, eagerly. 

“ It’s very kind of you, but don’t trouble ” 

“ It’s no trouble. I’ll get you one to-morrow.” 

“ Oh, it doesn’t matter ” 

“ That’s all right. I’ll leave it here for you.” 

I did buy the bag and it was certainly an excellent 
bargain. But when I told Edith, which at last I did, while 
I averted from her my uncertain eyes and gazed at the 
blazing brick walls and shimmering spire on Harrow Hill^ 
she said: 

“ I suppose Muriel wanted to buy it herself.” 

But why ? why } when I could get it at half-price ? ” 

“ She wanted to buy it herself,” said Edith, obstinately. 

I stuck to my point, reminded Edith that there was no 
question of choosing a bag, that Muriel wanted one exactly 
like the one she had. 

“ She didn’t want to trouble you.” Then, in a rather 
desperate tone : “ She wanted to do — to manage her own 
affairs.” 

Yes, that was it. I had an impotent little outburst, for 
I was moving in a crazy circle, one day offending English 
pride, and the other disturbing English humility. 

Edith did not defend her sister; her attitude was dis- 
approving and I knew that she was against me. Truly, 
blood is thicker than marmalade. At last she said: 

“ Don’t let’s quarrel, darling.” She took my hand. “ It’s 
lovely here with you.” 

The touch of her hand turned my thoughts from bitter 
to sweet. I drew her into my arms, kissed her softly on 
the forehead, then just behind the ear. The spell of her 
youth and her purity acted upon me incomprehensibly in 
this brazen light. To me, the passionate, the adventurous, 
it was like getting drunk on spring water. But I could 
not be content, I had to kill the thing I loved. 

“ Kiss me,” I said. 

She looked up at me, smiling, but did not move. I 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 267 

slipped my arms round her so that they were under 
hers. 

“ Kiss me — you haven’t since that night at Hambury.” 
As I whispered, slowly I raised my arms so as to lift hers; 
they responded to the movement, though I had to initiate; 
Edith’s hands clasped gently round my neck, and my face 
was very near hers. We kissed, and there was no fever in 
the caress, but delicious, calm content. I still held her 
close in my arms, pillowed against my raised knee. 

“Why don’t you kiss me yourself.^ Don’t you want 
to}” 

She blushed. “ Yes — I do — but, I’m afraid somehow. 
You might think me forward.” 

“ My darling ! ” I laughed at the phrase which recalled 
the much more equivocal French: " Comme vous alien .me 
mepriser! * “ No, I want you to be forward, as you say — 
I don’t want you to be afraid of anything. Now you shall 
do more; you shall not only kiss me, you shall ask me to 
kiss you.” 

“ Oh, Lucien, I couldn’t ” 

“ Do you want me to ? ” 

“ Yes, but ” 

“ Then ask.” 

She hesitated, and my mind flew back to the dingy room 
in St. Mary’s Terrace when I had failed to make Maud 
say “ I love you.” But at last Edith closed her eyes and 
murmured her request. As I kissed her I knew the savour 
of conquest; but she did not understand why I demanded 
tribute. What more did I want than her caress.^ Why 
should I wish to hear her say that she loved me? Why 
should I need to know that she wanted my kisses? Was 
it not enough that she should yield? 

Poor little English girls — of course, for too many cen- 
turies your men haven’t cared to know whether you loved 
them. They wanted you, not your love. They seldom 
wondered whether you loved them. Indeed, if the idea 
occurred to them, I think they set it aside as unladylike 


268 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


and repulsive, that they believed with Squire Western that 
marriage is well founded on a little aversion. It was this 
strange inquisitiveness in me that appealed to Edith while 
it frightened her, and yet it drew her out, for she had begun 
to feel that I would tolerate in her the things I did not 
understand. As we slowly walked towards Pinner, stop- 
ping at times to elamber over stiles, when I averted my 
eyes so that the exposure of her ankles might not make her 
ashamed, she talked. She talked more than I did, for I 
was glad to let her bare her soul. It was broken, this little 
speech, but precious. 

“ You know, Lucien, I’m two people, I think. There’s 
one of them longing for excitement, for things to happen. 
You know what I mean, you call it adventure; but then 
there’s another one, who’s clinging to rules and principles, 
all that sort of thing. The first Me wants to be bold — 
it wouldn’t be afraid to say anything, to say — There, I 
can’t say it.” 

“ What can’t you say, darling ” 

“ I can’t say ” Edith hesitated, then, with the air 

of a diver poising his body on the edge of the plank, “ I 
can’t say ‘ I love you ’ — the first Me wanted to, but the 
second was too shy.” 

“ I love you both,” I murmured. She pressed my hand. 

“ I’m afraid ; I’ve got no courage, no candour — oh, I 
won’t tell lies; no, I just say nothing. I can’t talk. Even 
with you, though it’s easier. You know it’s somehow more 
difficult to talk to you than to the others, though it’s easier. 
What I mean is, you say odd things, and I’m afraid because 
you aren’t afraid; I’m afraid because I feel you’re so 
obstinate, inflexible; you don’t care for conventions. I’m 
like a child with a box of matches.” 

“ My darling, if I asked you to run away with me and 
work for your living, you would. Wouldn’t you? You 
wouldn’t mind what they said? ” 

There was a long pause. 

“ I couldn’t,” said Edith, in a very low voice. “ I’d 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 269 


want to, but I couldn’t. Oh, Lucien, you won’t see it. 
I couldn’t give pain to my people, even if I knew they 
were wrong. If one of them were ill I’d have to stay at 
home and be their eyes and ears and arms and legs.” 

“ What about you — and me ? ” 

“ I’ve got to — got to ” 

“ Got to play the game ? ” 

“Yes,” said Edith, desperately; “I’ve got to. Oh, I 
want love and beauty as much as anybody, but there’s 
duty. Duty’s the only brave thing to do. It’s no use 
kicking against the pricks; one’s got to stand them, and 
one does unless one’s spoiled. Of course, I know I’m silly, 
narrow ” 

“ My darling, you’re wonderful.” 

I drew her to me, kissed her rather feverish lips, but she 
had more to say. 

“ I care for all the little things. When we marry I’ll 
be happy. I’ll be so glad, but I’ll miss father and mother, 
and Hugh and Muriel too — and Fiona ” 

“ I’ll buy you a bulldog.” 

“ A new dog,” she said, slowly, “ and a new house, and 
a new — well, you know what I was going to say, but there 
it is. It’ll all be so new, and the past’ll be dead; and 
I did like it, and all the other little things — parties, birth- 
days, and Christmas presents. Though it’ll be so good, 
Lucien; you don’t know how unhappy I was before you 
came — lonely. In Brussels I used to wish there was a man 
in love with me, anywhere, in Canada or China, even if he 
never wrote, just to feel some one loved me.” 

“ Yes,” I said, gently, “ one can be warmed by a distant 
love as one is warmed by the incredibly distant sun.” 

She pressed my arm, began again. “ I was afraid I 
wasn’t pretty enough — or clever enough. I was so lonely, 
I wanted a friend ” 

“ And now you have a lover.” 

“ Yes — it’s good — but I wanted a friend above all. 
Somebody to encourage me, to listen to me. That’s why 


270 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I’m so grateful when you make me talk, though I’m fright- 
ened. I know it’s weak to tell you things; it may bore 
you — yes, it’s all very well, but it may, and it isn’t right 
to unload worries ; it’s cowardly, selfish. But yet I’m 
grateful because you love me, while you might be amusing 
yourself, getting on. I wanted it so badly that — Oh, I 
couldn’t tell you.” 

I pressed her with questions. At last came the stumbling 
avowal that, when she was sixteen, a Mr. Egerton, a mar- 
ried man, had kissed her, that loneliness lay so heavy over 
her that she had not resisted. 

“ Oh, it was dreadful,” she said, hurriedly ; “ it felt so 
disloyal — I couldn’t help thinking of what his wife would 
say, how it would hurt her. Poaching. And now — now 
that there’s you, it’s worse.” She squared her shoulders, 
raised her head and looked me full in the eyes. “ I thought 
you ought to know.” 

Some seconds elapsed before I realised that Edith had 
thought she ought to confess this scandalous portion of 
her past: the English girl is the lover’s surprise packet. 
Though nervous, she looked happy; her conscience had 
been troubling her. I managed not to laugh when I 
thought of the absurd exaggeration — but then it was no 
more absurd to her than would have been to me the cata- 
logue of my own episodes. Then it seemed pathetic and 
I was stirred when I said: 

“ What does the past matter? Here we are, we two.” 

As we walked on, silent and glad, I saw Edith more 
clearly, her passionate desire for love and friendship. 
These were for her almost synonymous. Lonely in her 
heart and her spirit, she held out her hands, begging that 
they might be filled. To love and be loved, two necessi- 
ties. But she had never told me this before; she had not 
dared, and she was ashamed because she could not stand 
alone. Weak, she hated to be weak among the strong. 
Taught not to cry out when hurt, she despised herself 
because her soul cried out. And thus she was tortured 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 271 


on two sides, by her desires and the shame they entailed 
upon her; the things she wanted she feared: if she thought 
of passion at all she shrank from its effects, personal and 
social. Not once during our engagement did we use the 
word sex: I knew it was not for her ears, that it would 
frighten though it delighted her, and that it would have 
been cruel to frighten her thus, though I longed to frighten 
her. And some chivalry bade me refrain from using on 
her an influence which she together feared and welcomed. 

When, in response to a very faint hint, I confessed that 
there had been other women, Edith did not say, as I hoped, 
as I had said: “What does it matter.^ Here we are, we 
two.” She said, with serious lips, something much more 
touching : 

“ How they must have suffered when you left them.” 

I gripped her hand hard. She should not suffer, I swore. 
And I loved her because she had questioned me; that had 
been frank. 

Yes, she was frank now. Frank as might be a violet 
if it reared its head through moss and then looked round 
in horror, saying : “ Oh, what have I done ? ” 

VI 

We had tea in a little inn at Pinner, at an oak table 
surrounded by Windsor chairs. There was a grandfather’s 
clock that ticked against the oak panels; the white walls 
were decorated with copper warming pans, blue willow- 
pattern plates. The landlady had smiled discreetly upon 
us as she laid down the rough-cut bread and butter, the 
jam into which some negligent farmer’s daughter had put 
more stones than fruit. Then she had shut the door with 
much ceremony, after gloating over us: she was stout, 
very red-faced, and her crossed arms were enormous; she 
was one large gloat. We laughed when she tried the door 
from the outside to prove that it was quite closed, and we 
laughed when Edith dipped her finger into the jam and 


272 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I insisted on kissing the finger clean. We were practical, 
we decided the conduct of the “ campaign,” the “ opera- 
tions ” during the holidays, for we were both fond of mili- 
tary metaphors ; we proposed to “ tell ” if it were an- 
nounced that changes were to take place at Barbezan’s in 
view of Hugh’s marriage in October. But, though we were 
practical, the charm of enlightenment hung over us. I 
looked at Edith, smiling over the teapot, so wifely in that 
attitude, formulated: 

THE CREED OF A YOUNG ENGLISH GIRL 

“ I believe I must tell the truth, obey my parents 
and love them. I must conform to the rules of my 
caste, hold such ideas as it allows its women ; I must 
respect, in order, my father, my eldest brother, my 
mother, my sisters; I must be kind to my grand- 
mother, to my other relatives, to friends and 
servants: that is, be kind to those whom I do not 
respect. I believe in the Almighty as stated by the 
creed I have been taught to profess. I believe in 
courtesy, in good clothes, which must be neither much 
ahead of nor much behind the fashions, and such 
as befit my age. I believe in baths, clean linen. I 
believe that false hair, rouge, face powder are sinful. 

I believe that I must like, in order, music, books and 
pictures, but my liking for them must not be 
hysterical ; also I must see to it that all my reading 
be not light. I believe in love and that, in the 
name of love, providing my conscience tells me it 
is holy, I may transgress certain of my rules; but I 
believe that love must be pure and noble, that it must 
be steadfast and true; I believe that it comes but 
once in life and that it must be sacrificed if it 
threatens the eventual happiness of the loved one. 

I believe that I must not tell the loved one that 
I love him but that I must wait his pleasure. All 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SPIRIT 273 


this I must not tell. I believe that I must wait for 
success, for love, for death, and that I must not 
complain in the waiting. I believe that I must 
listen, not speak; obey, not command; respond, not 
exact. I am a pure young English girl ; my life 
is not my own. I believe that my business is to 
find its master.’* 


CHAPTER II 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 
I 

Working with all those abstract English forces was 
another, and curiously enough it was embodied in a man. 
I was surprised that this should happen, for I had not of 
late years found much use for men. At the higher com- 
mercial school three youths Gobot, Luzan and Lavalette 
had occupied my mind and stirred my emotions, but even 
then I knew that they were merely the channels of least 
resistance which my mind and emotions followed because 
they were the channels of least resistance. Some of our 
friendship was made up of youth’s passionate desire to 
express itself, and thence sprang the antagonism of our 
views; we did not in fact differ, but we had to differ in 
order to force out of ourselves anything that might be 
there; we shouted, we snatched words from one another’s 
mouths. It was good, but it was not what I wanted. 
Woman alone could give me that: thrilled sympathy, some 
admiration and gratitude for my condescending to think her 
worth talking to. I loved woman because she responded, 
because her mind leapt up to meet mine; and I hated man 
because he was my rival, demanded of me those things 
which I wanted myself. I tried, and a little because “ it 
was done ” in England, to make friends among men, and 
I succeeded in walking with Hugh Lawton, lunching with 
Barker; I managed to be interested in Bell and his slum 
boys, in Archie Neville, though I thought him too vapidly 
good; I let Merton take me to a football match, I asked 
Kent to smuggle me into a moot at Gray’s Inn. But 
nothing availed: I do not like men; there is no thrill in 

274 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 275 


their speech; no passion lights their eyes when I speak, 
(l am a Frenchman, I cannot be parted from women, I love 
them; I am uneasy when I love no woman, when no cheeks 
flush as I enter a room. Even if she love me not she must 
be there; I must see her gracious lines before me, hear 
the music of her high voice, the rustle of her skirts. 
Woman is the ozone of my atmosphere. I am a lover) 
When I am too old to be a lover I will be friend, confidant, 
match-maker, so that I may still be near her. When I 
die I hope that my soul will reincarnate into the body of 
a chocolate pom ... or of any beast woman fancies at 
that time. 

And yet the man came. Charles Stanley, one of the 
departmental heads of the Chinese and Peruvian Shipping 
Company, sat rather rigidly at his desk between glass 
walls beyond which I could see the clerks, some perched 
on high stools, some standing to write at their desks. My 
business was rather intricate. We had, acting for a client, 
chartered the Company’s steamer, Ning-Po, whose activities 
were, as a rule, confined to the China seas, while she 
lay at Liverpool on an empty bottom, to carry rolling-stock 
which she was to shed at Colombo, Singapore and Shang- 
hai; at Shanghai the Ning-Po was to load up an arranged 
consignment of raw silk, land it at San Francisco and 
terminate her journey at Panama, where she would be deliv- 
ered to agents of the Chinese and Peruvian. It was an 
admirable plan, for it converted the Ning-Po from a neces- 
sary carrier into a speculative tramp, while our clients 
escaped the risks of tramping. Unfortunately, on that 
morning the ship was steaming north from Singapore and 
the captain did not know that the warehouses containing 
the raw silk had been burned down. As wireless telegraphy 
did not yet count commercially, there were no means of 
instructing him to call at Manila and Canton on the chance 
of booking American freight; thus the operation threatened 
to end disastrously, for the Ning-Po might have to travel 
to Panama in ballast, unless we could secure the carrying 


276 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


of a large cargo of Japanese cotton goods, then lying in the 
Chinese and Peruvian’s charge, according to our cable ad- 
vices, at Yokohama. 

I explained so much of the facts as was politic, for it 
did not do to reveal, when bidding for freight, that the 
ship would probably have to travel in ballast to accomplish 
her journey within the term of the charter-party. Stanley 
listened to me to the end, nibbling his penholder. He was 
tall, very thin, rather bald; deep-set in his dark face, every 
feature of which was irregular, his grey eyes seemed ex- 
traordinarily passionless and acute. He fixed upon me so 
concentrated a gaze that I seemed to lose my nerve, to 
grow voluble; my trained bass voice threatened to revert 
to its high pitch. At last, when I had finished my long 
speech, splashed with the sonorous names of quite irrelevant 
Eastern ports, he ceased to nibble the penholder he held 
in his strong, knubbly brown fingers and, after a pause, 
said: 

“ Why do you want us to charter our own ship ? ” 

There had been no hesitation. The essential question 
had come out and I wondered by what devilry this man 
had guessed our weak point. I began once more my in- 
volved speech, mixing up “ Canton . . . possibility of ac- 
commodating you . . . Yokohama.” I struggled to keep 
him in ignorance of our casualty: if he found out he would 
offer a freight rate which barely covered our expenses. 
But as soon as I stopped Stanley was on me, swift as a 
boxer when his adversary gets up from his knees. 

“ You’ve no freight at Shanghai? ” 

“ We might ...” I faltered. 

“ The Ning-Po will travel to Panama in ballast. That 
is so?” 

His question was hardly a question; it was a piece of 
information, and the grey eyes held mine as the magnet 
holds iron. 

“ There may be no cargo,” I growled, ” or not enough.” 

“ Ah. Now we’re talking. Well, we haven’t fixed these 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 277 


cotton goods from Yokohama. You can have them at 
twenty-five shillings a ton.” 

I pretended to cry out in despair. It was preposterous. 
It would not cover our expenses. It would ... I 
shouted, I pleaded for thirty-five shillings, but Stanley 
nibbled on, made not the slightest effort to interrupt me. 
When I stopped he said: 

“ Twenty-five shillings. Or take her into Panama in 
ballast.” 

“We can pick up freight at Manila or Canton,” I said, 
truculently. 

Stanley did not reply. He opened The Shipping 
Gazette, ran a brown finger down a column. 

“ Steamer Ning-Po. Sailed from Singapore for 
Shanghai 14th. She’s not calling at Canton or Manila.” 

I remained silent. 

“ You’ve got no freight at Shanghai. You thought you 
had, but now you’re not sure. Something’s happened to 
your cargo.” 

“ How do you know? ” I asked, angrily. 

“Oh, something has happened?” A very faint smile 
creased the thin lips. “ What was your cargo? ” 

“ Silk,” I snarled. I felt now as a man must feel 
who is slowly being dragged from a music-hall by the 
chuckers-out. 

“ Silk, was it ? Burned ? ” 

“ Yes,” I said, wearily. “ How did you tell? ” 

Again no direct reply; then quickly: 

“ Well, take your chance at Shanghai. You may 
find freight . . . but don’t wait too long there. If the 
Ning-Po doesn’t reach Panama on the date, it’s fifty pounds 
a day.” 

I gazed sulkily at my feet. When I looked up, humbly 
now, the grey eyes seemed kinder but still unflinching. 

“ It’s a deal at twenty-five shillings then? ” said 
Stanley. 

“ I’ll tell them. I can't accept myself.” 


278 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“Right oh/’ said Stanley, airily; “and tell them we 
put down our price sixpence every hour.” 

It was terrific; and when I left the office I was over- 
whelmed by my defeat at the hands of this man who had 
gone straight to the heart of the business. Nine-tenths of 
the interview had been taken up by my conversation, my 
evasions and verbal nimblenesses, one-tenth by his series 
of intuitive stabs. He had guessed everything, our empty 
hold, the ju-jitsu lock laid upon us by the fact that we 
had to render up the ship on a given date; he had even 
guessed that our cargo was burned. I do not know how 
it is done; Stanley says it is elimination, that in the case 
of the cargo he saw at once we would not have chartered 
the ship unless we knew there was return freight; ergo the 
cargo must have disappeared ; a shipload of -silk couldn’t 
be stolen ; ergo it was fire or water ; no floods in the papers, 
ergo fire. May be, but certainly Stanley eliminates the 
unlikely as fast as a mechanical drier expels water. 

II 

We became friends. Stanley held out his hand to me 
the same day, when I returned in the afternoon to agree 
abjectly to his terms on behalf of our client. While he 
telephoned the cable room to make sure that the Yoko- 
hama cargo was still open, I studied his face; it was a 
monkish countenance, very long and emphasised as to 
length by the recession of his dark hair; his bent brow 
seemed enormous and was furrowed by a great number 
of horizontal lines ; there was a break in his nose, a 
humorous twist in his thin mouth. His clothes were very 
dusty and seemed to have been made for a much bigger 
man; he had never been manicured. When he looked up 
at me I was again flooded by a sense of clarity rather than 
power. 

“ That’s O.K.,” he said. 

I was dismissed, but something held me back. As he 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 279 


looked at me I saw at once that he knew it, that he was 
analysing . . . eliminating, I suppose. It was intolerable; 
I was being vivisected. 

“ Look here,” I blurted, “ that’s all right. But this 
morning I tried to bounce you.” 

“ That was your duty. Besides, you enjoyed it.” 

“I did,” I said, rather wonderingly; “how can you 
tell.?^ ” 

“ Sheer intellectual pleasure. Just like chess, you know. 
Do you play chess?” 

“ Yes.” I did, not very well, but then in the City one 
has to play chess if one hates dominoes. 

“ Come and have a game with me. What time d’you 
get out to lunch ? One ? I go later ; still, I can manage it. 
To-morrow at the Gracechurch Street Mecca? Right 
oh.” 

I went and was so nervous that Stanley fool’s-mated 
me, then beat me in less than twenty-five moves, giving 
me pawn and move. There was no sport in those games 
which we now played at lunch three or four times a week, 
while the gravy on our plates clotted into grease, but they 
served a good purpose. Stanley confessed this to me a little 
later. 

“ I like your spirit; you never give in. Of course you’re 
a silly ass, and you make it a rotten game by sticking to 
it and exchanging until I get down to king and rook or 
something . . .” 

“ I never give in,” I said, sulkily. 

“ But why not? I thought Frenchmen didn’t stick.” 

“ They don’t,” I said. “* But Englishmen do, and that’s 
why I stick.” 

“ It’s a rotten game,” Stanley persisted, “ but then that’s 
your way. It’s like the day you came and tried to bounce 
me about the old N^ing-Po; you came at me with a regular 
net of words. You said the same thing ten times, tangling 
and tangling. Yes, you came at me with a net.” 

“ Well, you came at me with a rapier.” 


280 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


This was true. Stanley’s mind worked like a sword; 
mine worked like the net of the retiarius, but I was going 
to be an Englishman, and therefore “stuck”; the English 
had always gained what they wanted by “ sticking.” 
Naturally subtle, I often tried to combine subtlety with 
obstinacy, for the English bull is obstinate. Our relation 
therefore contained a paradox: the Frenchman liked the 
Englishman for his quick Latin mind ; the Englishman 
liked the Frenchman for his artificial English grit. The 
friendship was anti-natural, but it prospered, for Stanley 
did not refuse himself as do most Englishmen; though 
born in Northumberland he was not suspicious; rather 
he did not deign to be suspicious, as his Northern pride 
told him that his mind was so keen that no despised 
Southerner could injure him. Soon, therefore, I discovered 
him to be a human being, a rare species of Englishman. 
He still played cricket and was generally right when he 
gauged the chances of teams; he read enormously, eco- 
nomics, philosophy, verse, novels and newspapers ; he never 
liked a very bad book, though his taste was not quite devel- 
oped enough to keep him from the second-rate: he saw, 
but he did not feel very keenly, and for this reason could 
not love the greatest. He was very gentle, a little senti- 
mental under the cynical varnish, and worshipped his 
absurd little wife. 

I was taken down to dine at his small house at Esher. 
His wife, whom he overtopped by a foot, leapt at his neck 
in the hall. She was fair, plump, round. She had round 
wrists, round blue eyes, a one-year-old baby, the roundest 
baby boy I had ever seen. Stanley called her delightful 
and insulting names: “dumpling,” and “toadstool,” 
and “ roly-poly.” Though he had been married two years 
he still persisted in asking her whether she had come in 
handy at school when the teacher wanted to illustrate the 
use of globes. 

“ Isn’t he silly, Mr. Cadoresse.^ ” she asked (round- 
mouthed), “with his dumplings? You silly old hop-pole! 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 281 


Do you come in handy as an alpenstock? You . . . hay- 
fork ! ” 

She was no fool. Their conversation seemed to touch 
everything from religion to the rise of coal prices, and 
she was nimble enough, knowing his elimination methods, 
to “ fox ” him when he tried to guess her opinions. 

“ Ha,” she would cry, triumphantly, “ I knew you’d 
think I wanted a new bonnet for baby because I said his 
was shabby. Well, I don’t; he’s done with bonnets . . . 
he wants a hat. Got you ! ” 

But Stanley persisted in mental analysis. He even tried 
it on the dog, an Irish terrier. 

“ I see your game, Pat,” he said, severely. “ You’re 
begging for your dinner because you know the meat isn’t 
up yet. Therefore you think you’ll get a bit of sugar to 
keep you quiet. Wrong, Pat, wrong. There is no sugar.” 

“ It’s you who are wrong, Sherlock Holmes,” said Mrs. 
Stanley. “ He’s begging for the cat who’s sitting on the 
back of your chair.” 

I loved them. Nothing told me that I was going to need 
them, but a bridge was being made. 

Ill 

I was going to need the Stanleys, as I was going to need 
my own strength, the power of my optimism and my love. 
Before the end of that month of July, when Edith unveiled 
her soul, an atmosphere which I felt in the making began 
to define itself. Mr. Lawton was courteous to me in the 
office, but cold; he seldom now added general conversa- 
tion to commercial instructions ; he did not tell me, as 
he had done the year before, where the family was going 
for the summer or suggest that I might come down for 
a week-end. He did worse: Hugh was going abroad for 
a month in August and I, as second to him, expected to 
have charge of the Exports. Mr. Lawton, however, took 
an unexpected course. 


282 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 

" Oh, Cadoresse/’ he said, “ I’ll attend to things while 
Mr. Hugh is away.” 

“ I’ll manage,” I replied^ and there must have been 
something aggressive in my tone, for Mr. Lawton said 
very distinctly: “ I — can — do — that.” Then, as if a little 
remorseful, “ I’m not too busy.” 

For a few seconds our glances crossed, but I could read 
nothing in those calm blue eyes. I saw merely a very 
handsome man of fifty, absolutely unruffled as to hair or 
clothing. And his steady, well-cut mouth told me nothing. 
The terrible English veil hung in front of his face. But, 
in later weeks, my impression was confirmed: I was not 
being pushed out, but I was not being let in. I was 
striving against something which did not yield, something 
which suggested, though it never said, “ Oh, leave this to 
me, Cadoresse,” or “ You must ask Mr. Purkis for instruc- 
tions.” But what was it? what? suspicion of my relation 
to Edith? a hint that I could not hope for preferment? 
Who can tell ... in England ? 

And the atmosphere thickened still more in September 
when the Lawtons returned. There was a coldness in the 
air; I called, but was not asked to call again. Muriel, 
when reminded that she was to teach me to play golf, 
pleaded vague engagements. Hugh did not again walk 
home with me ; he had “ a man to meet at the Club,” or 
he had to go to the tailor’s. 

It was three months since the last of our queer, intimate 
little talks, which were for me rather like a game with a 
tortoise: one incautious touch, and in went the head. We 
had gone to his club for a drink before dinner and, very 
warily, I had drawn Hugh away from memories of Win- 
chester towards his theory of schools. 

“ Of course they don’t get swished very often,” he said 
when I attacked corporal punishment, “ but one has to 
have a cane about. Just for the look of the thing.” 

“ Like the classics ? ” 

We had a long, formless discussion, Hugh defending 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 28S 


Latin and Greek on the plea that they trained the mind 
(which mathematics or English literature couldn’t do) and 
taught one to understand one’s own language (much better 
than German, even though English was German rather than 
Latin). Hugh was going to maintain the classics, as a 
sort of introduction to Shakespeare. 

“ Do you read Shakespeare? ” I asked. 

“Well ...” He hesitated, then, confidentially: “ I do 
rather like Shakespeare, but . . . one can’t talk about 
him, that would never do. . . . Side, you know, all that 
sort of thing.” 

I delighted in these revelations, and I missed them, but 
Edith could tell me nothing, for nothing had been said; 
we were afraid, so afraid that we almost decided to tell, 
to end the tension. 

“ There’s something up,” I said, “ somebody suspects. 
The maids smile at me when I come . . . your mother, 
she’s cool. Even Fiona . . . oh, laugh if you like, but 
a few minutes ago, when we sat on the sofa, she came and 
sat down between us, looked at us each in turn with that 
idiotic, sentimental air of hers. It sounds mad, but she’s 
been different to me since you and I . . .” 

“ You’re absurd,” said Edith, irritably. The something 
was beginning to tell upon her. 

Four days later we were caught at St. Bartholomew’s. 
We stood hidden by the side of an enormous stone pillar, 
hand in hand, very happy. Suddenly I saw Edith stiffen; 
she grasped my hand so hard that her finger-nails hurt me. 
Her other hand, raised, stopped my exclamation. Two 
yards off passed a couple, Bessie Surtees and a middle- 
aged woman in country tweeds. 

“Did they see us?” Edith whispered, tensely. “I’m 
not sure Bessie didn’t.” 

“ We were in the shadow of the pillar,” I said. 

We made light of it, though I had to hold down in Edith 
a terror that struggled like a weasel in a gin. 

“ I can’t bear it ... we must tell ... we must tell. 


284 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISFIMAN 


Oh^ if we were caught, it’d be dreadful. It’s bad enough 
deceiving them . . . but to be caught. . . .” 

I comforted her, kissed her in the dark, silent church, 
pointed out that we must wait a few weeks, for Hugh was 
to be married in November, the wedding having been post- 
poned, and we needed to know whether he was going to be 
made a partner. Edith clung to me, trembled, agreed, but 
the afternoon was spoiled, for now we knew that some 
accident must happen if we waited; the struggle was going 
to begin. 

It began, but not at our own time. On the fourteenth 
of October I was asked to dinner; I had not been invited 
to the house for three months and now wondered whether 
I had exaggerated the tension or whether the Lawtons 
were merely doing the decent thing. By a private arrange- 
ment with Edith I arrived at ten to eight, was shown up 
to the empty drawing-room, into which she tiptoed, breath- 
less, as soon as the maid was out of the way. She ran into 
my arms like a little, frightened animal, and there she lay, 
quivering, while I covered with impatient kisses her mouth, 
her cheeks, her soft, white neck. 

“ Oh, Lucien, it’s been so long, so long ... a fort- 
night.” 

“ My darling, my darling, have courage! Soon we shall 
be together, soon. Kiss me. Ah, kiss me again.” 

I crushed her against my breast. I hurt her, I wanted 
to hurt her, and she laughed weakly as I relaxed the 
pressure but still held her in my arms. For a moment we 
remained, eyes gazing into eyes. Then we heard a sound, 
parted as suddenly as the strands of a broken rope. In 
the doorway stood Hugh. 


IV 

For three or four seconds the silence was quite per- 
ceptible. The air of the room seemed to have acquired 
an extraordinary, blanket-like quality. Then there was 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 285 


a change; I heard with extreme distinctness a motor-car 
pass the house and stop a little further up the street, and 
the maids in the basement, laughing noisily. But the 
sounds, clear though they were, seemed foreign to the 
scene, as if they came from another plane, while we three 
stood in a plane all our own. 

Hugh had closed the door as he came in, stood against 
it, his face expressionless, a tall, rigid body. Edith had 
retreated to my right and clutched the settee so tight with 
both hands that on every one of her finger-nails I saw 
a red zone surrounded with white. And her eyebrows were 
comically twisted in the middle over her strained eyes. I 
knew that my fists were clenched, that a stream of blood 
had rushed up into my head, burning my ears, and pains 
in my teeth told me that my jaws were hard jammed so 
that the bones stood out. 

The seconds passed and we did not speak. A stranger 
who lived in my brain cried out that this was a stage . . . 
the West End stage ... he cast the three characters 
without hesitation, picking out well-known actor-managers 
and the latest ingenue. . . . 

Hugh moved, very slightly. The play producer vanished 
and a trainer shouted tips at me: “ Don’t look at his hands 
. . . watch his eyes . . . get him on the point with your 
left and bring the right over the heart. . . .” 

At last Hugh spoke, and the effect was that of an unex- 
pected pistol shot, though his voice was absolutely normal: 

“ Edith,” he said, “ you’d better go up to mother for 
a bit.” 

He opened the door and stood aside to let her pass. 
For a moment she had met his gaze, still clutching the 
settee, but his rigidity mastered her and she ran past him. 
I heard her draw in a great gulp of air as she ran. Then 
Hugh, closing the door, turned towards me, and I realised 
that I was a fool, that there would be no fight. He w^as 
too cool. I was glad, for I was a little afraid of this 
trained man who could give me three inches and at least a 


286 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


stone^ and I was sorry, for the excitement of the encounter 
was such that, to allay it, I wanted to leap at him, tear, 
bite, scratch. But Hugh, still collected, spoke very quietly. 

“ Well have to talk this over, Cadoresse. The others 11 
be here in less than a minute and well want more than 
that. Ill find an opportunity after dinner. Is that all 
right ” 

“ Yes,” I said after a pause. 

The door opened to let in a laughing couple, Muriel 
and Louisa. 

“ What are you plotting, you two ? ” asked Louisa. 

He smiled benignantly at the flushed face, the dimpled 
little chin. 

“ We were talking of golf. Cadoresse says it’s too much 
fag to get down to the links and that he’s going in for 
marbles.” 

“ I really shall have to take you on, Mr. Cadoresse,” 
said Muriel. “ I’m ashamed I didn’t keep my promise. 
But we’d better get Louisa to take us down to her club, 
the West Repton; I have to manage with clay, worse 
luck, while West Repton’s sand. Now in October, when 
it’s wet ” 

I listened with apparent absorption to a mercifully long 
lecture on sand versus clay, which expanded as Muriel 
talked into a disquisition on made links, on bunkers, on 
hard lines. While I listened and managed an occasional 
appropriate comment on the game, my mind worked round 
and round, like a goldfish in an aquarium : “ What was 
going to happen.^ What would Hugh do? What should 
I do? No reply. Then, the other way round: “What 
should I do? What would Hugh do? What was going 
to happen ? ” . . . 

“ Oh, yes,” I said in a high voice, “ you’d better help 
me buy my clubs.” 

But I felt giddy. More people came in, Mr. Lawton, 
Edward Kent, Mrs. Lawton, apologising for being late, 
and then Edith, behind her, with two flaming patches on 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 287 


her cheeks^ a metallic gleam in her eyes and a quivering 
mouth. I could hardly bear to look at her. And other 
people, the two Bennings, and a man with no face, and 
a woman who, when she laughed, made a sound like a 
cockatoo’s screech and . . . 

Damnation ... I don’t know who came, what they 
wore ... I don’t know whether the dinner happened at 
all. I remember only an atmosphere, paradoxes some- 
where, near Kent I suppose, and the cockatoo laugh, and 
Edith, just her face, red and white, not a face at all, but 
a painted carnival mask, and my voice, harsh, high . . . 
some dogmatic views, some laughing, ah, plenty of that, 
and champagne, plenty of that too and the sear of it on 
my palate. At last the women gone, and Hugh’s voice, 
clear as a flute: 

“ Oh, Cadoresse, you wanted to see that new gun of 
mine. Come up to my room and have a look at it.” 


V 


‘‘Well.?*” said Hugh. 

Before I answered him I took in a few details. His 
was a large room, the third floor front. Rose-bud wall- 
paper; good silver fittings on the dressing table; on the 
walls prints after Cecil Aldin and Tom Browne; above 
the bed a large photograph of a football team; in a corner 
a cricket-bat, golf-sticks. These objects marked my mind 
without my knowing it, for I remembered them best a few 
days later. My brain was busy with his “Well.?*” He 
had spoken almost lazily, as if the tragedy bored him. 
Apollo was languid and was evidently doing his duty be- 
cause it was the thing to do; evidently too he cared, or he 
wouldn’t have bothered, but his ease exasperated me. 

“Well what?” I said. “It’s for you to talk. Go on. 
Tell me what you think of me. Call me a blackguard. 
Say I’ve come behind your father’s back to steal his daugh- 


288 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


ter . . . say I’ve played you all a dirty trick. . . . Go 
on, don’t be afraid.” 

” I wasn’t going to say anything of the kind,” said 
Hugh. “ I wasn’t going to say anything. It’s for you to 
say what yoy’re going to do about it.” 

“ What do you want me to do about it? ” 

“ My dear fellow,” said Hugh, blandly, “ you really must 
see that there’s only one thing for a man to do when he’s 
caught kissing a girl.” 

“ Oh ! ” His ease continued to annoy me, but I did 
not understand him at once. Then, suddenly I understood: 
Hugh meant to suggest that I might not intend to marry 
Edith, but that now I was caught and must ask for her 
hand. That cast such a vileness over the kiss he had sur- 
prised that, for a moment, I could not find words. At last 
I said, hoarsely : “ Do you mean to say that you think I 
don’t want to marry her? Do you dare ? ” 

“ My dear chap,” said Hugh, as he raised a deprecating 
hand, “ please don’t say ‘ do you dare ’ ; this isn’t the 
Adelphi and it isn’t done, it really isn’t done. You’ll be 
challenging me to fight a duel, like you did Farr . . 
His tone was almost worried. 

“No need to drag that up,” I replied, savagely. “ Say 
what you have to say.” 

“ Well,” Hugh went on in his tired voice, “ it’s simple 
enough. It looks as if you were gone on Edith, and, mind 
you, I don’t see anything against that; she’s a decent little 
kid. I suppose you want to marry her: then there’s only 
one thing to do, as she seems willing; you’ve got to go to 
my father and ask for his consent.” 

I was surprised, so surprised that I forgot to be annoyed 
by his familiar allusions to my “ being gone ” on Edith, 
“ a decent little kid.” Edith ! . . . a decent little kid ! 
What I could not at once understand was the coolness with 
which he received the fact that I, an unrecognised suitor, 
had kissed his sister without having beforehand gained a 
right to pay my addresses to her. I knew that this was 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 289 


the English way, but knowing did not make it much less 
wonderful. 

“*Do you mean to say jou don’t mind? ” I asked. 

“ Mind? Why should I mind? Edith’s got as good a 
right to marry whom she likes as I have.” 

My mind flew back to his father, the Churchman, plead- 
ing for the rights of the Nonconformists. This tall, rather 
commonplace fellow suddenly seemed splendid. 

“ I say,” I remarked, rather wonderingly, “ it’s awfully 
decent of you. You see, I thought there would be dif- 
ficulties ; I haven’t much of a position ” 

“ Nothing to do with me,” said Hugh. “ If Edith 
w^anted to marry the cobbler round the corner I mightn’t 
like it, but it’d be her look-out.” 

” Ah, so you don’t like the idea,” I cried, my pride at 
once scenting insult. 

“ Don’t be a silly ass ; I wouldn’t have you up here if 
I minded. But I’m not going to take sides; if my father 
agrees that’s good enough for me. You can have her if 
you can get her, but things have gone far enough in a hole- 
and-corner way; you’ve got to finish them off fair and 
square.” 

“Well, I will tell him. Of course I’ll tell him; I’ve 
wanted to for months.” 

“ Good. Let me see, those people won’t stay long; they 
know there’s something up. Oh, yes, they do; the talk 
was pretty jerky at dinner; not one of them’U stay late?* 
than eleven. Not one. You’ll have an opportunity then; 
I’ll see to it.” 

“ But — but ” I gasped, “ you don’t want me to tell 

him to-night? ” 

“ Why not?” 

“ It’s so sudden — I ” 

“ You’re going to tell him soon. You may as well do 
it to-night.” 

We crossed .eyes and I realised that Hugh, having decided 
without much consideration that I was to settle the matter 


290 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 

that night, would not budge. He might know he was 
unreasonable, but then he was English: he had started 
and must go on. Then I refleeted that it did not suit me 
to speak that night; it was important that I should know 
whether there would be changes in the firm. I thought 
of confiding in Hugh, but prudence held me back; if I 
mentioned business he would think me mercenary : the 
English know, but never like to think that marriage has 
anything to do with money. 

“ I shan’t,” I said. “Not to-night. Soon, but not to- 
night.” 

“ Why } ” said Hugh. 

“ I can’t tell you. I’ll ask him soon, but not to-night.” 

“ I can’t agree to your putting it off, Cadoresse.” 
Hugh’s voice was polite but a little hard, and some wrinkles 
appeared between his eyebrows. 

“ I shan’t do it to-night,” I replied. 

There was a pause during which we measured each 
other’s powers. Vaguely I knew that the cool one was 
winning because he was cool, but I could not regain my 
composure. 

“ You must,” said Hugh in a low voice. 

“ I must.^ Oh ... I understand, you mean that if I 
don’t go to-night you will, that you’ll ” 

“Chuck it!” He was angry. I had scored a point 
then. No, though; Hugh did not raise his voice much, 
despite the passion in it. “ I’m not going to give you away. 
I’m not a sneak, Cadoresse, though you choose to think 
so. What I mean is that I can’t have a man hanging 
round my sister and making love to her without his having 
the pluck to do it openly. You’ve got to break cover some 
time: any way you’ll get a run for your money. You want 
Edith: well, go and ask for her, don’t beat about the bush, 
don’t hide, or squirm when it comes to the point; face the 
thing out, and if you do get whacked take your licking like 
a man.” 

There was fire in his eyes; the sporting jargon excited 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 291 

him, expressed him and his passion for the right, that 
English form of right which has no subtlety or qualifica- 
tions, which has less bend in it than there is in a battle- 
axe. 

“ Well, suppose I won’t,” I said. 

He ignored my answer. 

“You will,” he said suavely. 

“ Will How do you know? ” 

“ You will, Cadoresse. You’re going to play the game. 
Oh, I know, you wouldn’t have done it four years ago . . . 
and even then I’m not sure, but anyhow, now you’ve been 
here four years you know what I mean. You’re going 
to bell the cat to-night because it’s the thing to do, the 
decent thing. I’m not going to give you away, of course; 
I couldn’t, but if you don’t do it I’ll put it into the mater’s 
head that Edith’s looking peaky; I’ll have her sent down 
to Brighton; I’ll set Louisa to keep an eye on her; you 
shan’t write to her either; I’ll grab the letters first post; 
and if you do manage to get hold of her again I’ll tackle 
her and make her tell. . . . It’s the decent thing to do.” 

I listened, less angry now than amazed. Here was a 
brother ready to torture his sister, to spy on her, to have 
her persecuted by others, briefly to do the rotten thing 
because he wanted her to do the decent thing ! And appar- 
ently it did not matter what Edith suffered provided nobody 
sneaked and everybody did the decent thing. He was for 
the letter of a gentleman’s law. 

A spasm of anger stirred me. 

“ Damn the decent thing ! ” I shouted. “ Why, there’s 
no decent thing, not in love . . . you all say that ‘ all’s 
fair in love and war.’ ” 

He hesitated, for he trusted proverbs and quotations as 
much as he doubted epigrams. He withdrew into the keep 
of his obstinacy. 

“ The decent thing is the decent thing, and you know 
it.” 

“ I don’t, I don’t pretend to know what’s the decent 


292 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


thing; or at any rate it isn’t bullying and persecuting a 
young girl and making a man do by threats a thing he 
thinks undesirable. The decent thing isn’t a live thing, 
a real thing; it used to be, when it was invented, but 
you’ve let it get out of date. Good heavens, Lawton, the 
decent thing you talk about came in with the Crusaders. 
It’s dead, dried up; it’s a mummy.” 

“ It’s all the better for having come in with the 
Crusaders,” said Hugh ; “ if it’s still going on, that shows 
there was some good in it.” 

I had an unwonted attack of Frenchness, raised my hand 
in despair. I had touched the rock bottom of England, 
her conservatism. It was all over, I was beaten, I felt 
limp, and I did not mind, for here was a splendour of sorts, 
this attitude of narrow purity, senseless honour. I knew 
that he had won as he came at me with those simplicities 
which stirred me like fine music, those splendid English 
views which are as unimaginative as a cask of English beer 
and as strong: 

“ Even if you think it may not do the trick, play fair. 
I’ve got nothing against you and I tell you this: there’s 
only one right way of doing anything; all the others are 
wrong. There’s the straight road, and a hundred crooked 
ones. If you want anything go and ask for it, that’s the 
straight road. If you can’t get it like that, you’ve got to 
take it, that’s the next step on the straight road. Let it 
all be fair, honest fighting, with no dodgy ways and no 
messing with the rules; let it all be fair and square, so 
that if you are licked you may feel you did your best. 
And you’re going to do that because you’re a decent sort 
of chap ” 

He faltered, for his last words made him shy. Then he 
went on. “You will; I’m not going to take sides, and 
whether you win or lose I won’t take sides, for it isn’t 
my business. It’s yours and Edith’s and my father’s. But 
I can put my father up to it before you see him; it may 
help you, though, mind you, I shan’t take sides either way. 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BROTHER 293 


All I’ll do is to wish you luck. Shall I do that? You’ll 
bell the cat to-night? ” 

I hesitated; he was smiling; never had he looked so 
handsome, so unutterably stupid and yet splendid. 

“ All right,” I said rather gloomily, “ I’ll bell the trick.” 

“ Bell the cat, you silly fool,” Hugh roared as he opened 
the door and pushed me out; and again, as he smacked 
me on the shoulder: 

“Not the trick . . . the cat! " 


CHAPTER III 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 

“ What’s this I hear about you and Edith? ” asked Mr. 
Lawton. 

Hugh had prepared him, then. I did not at once reply. 
I stood, one hand upon the corner of the dining-room 
table, looking past Mr. Lawton’s well-brushed head at the 
clock which said ten-past eleven ; I was nervous, and, as he 
leaned against the mantelpiece, the whole scene of our first 
meeting in my mother’s Empire drawing-room passed 
through my mind. I saw myself as a small, bare-legged 
boy, inquiring and confident, much more confident than 
at this moment; and “young Lawton,” who had not 
changed so very much. An immense interval of time 
seemed to elapse while I looked at him, described him to 
myself as a very well-groomed man of fifty, with fair, 
straight hair streaked with grey, regular features, a firm 
mouth and eyes as unflinching, as blue as those of his son. 
He seemed immensely tall, and his absolute immobility 
was impressive. Why did he not roar at me? I won- 
dered; surely the occasion justified it. 

“ It’s true,” I said at length. Then, defiantly, “ Quite 
true. I’m in love with your daughter Edith.” 

“ Oh — hem ” He was embarrassed ; I guessed that 

“ in love ” was too stagey for an Englishman, that I 
ought to have said: “ I want to marry your daughter 
Edith.” 

“ Well,” he said at length, “ what do you expect me 
to say to that? You can’t expect me to say that I approve, 
give my consent to your marrying her. I suppose that’s 
what you mean.” 

“ Yes, I want to marry her, and I ask for your consent.” 

294 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 295 


Mr. Lawton did not move. Suddenly I wanted to make 
him angry ; it was proper he should be angry if he refused 
his consent. 

“ I’m going to marry her/’ I said, defiantly. 

“Oh.^^” He remained perfectly calm. “You say you 
are going to marry her? Without my consent? ” 

“ I did not say that,’’ I replied, more cautiously, ad- 
dressing the head of the firm. 

“You suggested it. Still, I will let that pass, though 
I may as well tell you that Edith will refuse to marry you 
if I forbid it. Let that be quite clear.” 

I had doubts as to his power, but said nothing. 

“ Let it also be perfectly clear that I do not consent. 
You will want to know my reasons. They must be obvious 
to you. In the first place I think Edith is too young 
to marry just yet; she is only twenty, and she is too young 
in mind, too childish ” 

“ Excuse me,” I interrupted. Edith too childish ! 

“ One minute, and allow me to give my opinion of a girl 
whom I have known rather longer than you have. Edith 
is a child; she is not very strong; she is full of romantic 
notions, and I’m sure that that’s why she — why — well, 
anyhow, I understand from what Hugh said that she con- 
siders herself . . . attached to you . . .” 

Mr. Lawton stumbled on for a few sentences. Obviously 
he was not used to talking of love: he soon abandoned the 
sub j ect. 

“She will get over it; every young girl passes through 
this kind of affair, so I’m not blaming her. You, 
Cadoresse, I blame. You’re not very old either, but I 
happen to know something about Frenchmen; a Frenchman 
of twenty-five ” 

“ Twenty-six,” I corrected. 

“ Well, twenty-six, is at least as old as an Englishman 
of thirty. The sort of life Frenchmen lead. . . . But 
I’ll let that alone, you know what I mean. Therefore 
you must have known perfectly well that as I was not 


296 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


likely to let you marry Edith you were not entitled to 
make — to propose to her.” 

“ I did not know that,” I said. 

“You did not.^ What position have you to offer 
her?” 

“ It is a rising position.” 

Mr. Lawton smiled, and I could not help liking him 
because he was so calm in tragic circumstances. He had 
not yet taken his hands from his pockets. 

“ Rather a tall thing to say to the senior partner, 
Cadoresse. Still . . . yes, I see what’s surprising you; it’s 
that I’ve said senior partner, isn’t it? ” 

“Well!” I said. 

“ This is hardly the place to discuss the matter, but 
I want you to understand that I have nothing against you 
in general, and for that reason I will tell you, in confidence, 
that my son will become a junior partner next month, 
before his marriage. As for you, as I have said, I appre- 
ciate your services; you will take Mr. Hugh’s place, and 
we’re going to raise you to three hundred a year at 
Christmas.” 

“ Thank you,” I said mechanically. But my mind at 
once set aside this good news. Edith alone occupied me, 
and I was trying to adjust my ideas as to this man who 
could be so judicial, blame my private behaviour, and yet 
promote me according to my commercial merits. These 
English gentlemen! 

“ That, however, has nothing to do with the business 
we’re discussing. What makes you smile ? ” 

“ Nothing,” I said. I could not tell him that I was 
not English enough yet to look upon our difference as 
“ business.” 

“ As I say,” Mr. Lawton went on, “ it’s got nothing 
to do with it. You cannot marry Edith on three hundred 
a year, nor on four, and there’s no idea of giving you 
four. You know the life she’s been used to; to marry her 
on three hundred a year would be preposterous. Edith’s 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 297 

not the girl to rough it in the suburbs with a day- 
girl.” 

“ How much do you want ? ” I asked. 

“ How much I } What } ” My bluntness about 

money disconcerted Mr. Lawton as much as his awkward- 
ness about love disconcerted me. “ You mean how much 
do I think you need? Say a thousand a year. Eight 
hundred at least.” 

“ Not so much as that/’ I said^ but I felt he was right; 
I was summoning courage to say boldly: “Make me a 
partner then, I’m as good a man as Hugh,” but he inter- 
rupted me. 

“ Every halfpenny of it. The business can’t afford 
that — and besides, there are other reasons.” 

This time there was a long pause. My bold phrase 
receded and receded into the back of my mind, while I 
conjured up the other reasons. Black eyes and blue eyes 
met now with a more dangerous air. 

“Other reasons?” I said, politely; “would you 
mind ? ” 

“ I had much rather not, Cadoresse. It’s quite unneces- 
sary; you have my answer; I decline; though, as I say, 
I have nothing against you.” 

Evidently he was trying to spare me, to do the thing 
nicely, but I was going to know. 

“ No,” I replied, “ you must tell me, Mr. Lawton. This 
is not fair.” 

I had chosen my last words with intention. An Eng- 
lishman will do anything if you can make him believe it is 
“ fair ” to do it. I was right. 

“ I don’t know about it’s not being fair, Cadoresse, 
but if you think so, as I don’t want you to think yourself 
unfairly treated, I will tell you. I don’t want Edith to 
marry a foreigner.” 

“ Why not? ” 

“ I don’t want Edith to marry a foreigner,” he repeated, 
obstinately. “If you really want to know why I’ll try 


298 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


and tell you. IVe got nothing against foreigners, but 
they’re different, they’re fundamentally different, they’re 
. . . foreign.” 

“ Oh ! ” I said, very angry but quite cold, “ I under- 
stand. Foreigners are foreign, and because they’re 
foreign they’re foreigners.” 

“ Don’t be so damnably logical,” said Mr. Lawton, testy 
at last. “That’s just it, Cadoresse, that’s just like the 
foreigner; you’ve got to have sentences made like razor- 
blades, and you’re angry if you cut yourself with them. 
There! I’m making epigrams now; as if I were a foreigner 
myself; it’s catching, I suppose. But look here, just try 
to understand a little. Here you are, a Frenchman; you’ve 
been four years in England. That’s right, isn’t it? You’ve 
done pretty well, but you’re still a Frenchman.” 

“ I’m sorry ” I began. He interrupted me. 

“ There’s nothing to be sorry about. There’s no harm 
in being a Frenchman; I’ve met lots of them — your father, 
a very fine fellow, and lots of other intelligent, honourable, 
sober people, but they were French. Now just try and 
think how different you are from us. They educate you 
differently, in a way better; they cram you with all sorts 
of things we never hear of, even at the ’Varsity, things 
like European history, and seience mixed up with trans- 
lations of the classics. That’s one of the things; in Eng- 
land we don’t go in for mixtures ; a man’s a classical scholar 
or he’s been on the modern side. You may not think it 
matters, just because I can’t be sure of the meaning of 
the inscription on a coin though I gave Latin six years — 
but it does.” 

I looked at him. Did it? Perhaps. These people do 
specialise. 

“ That means that you don’t grow up like us ; oh, I 
know, plenty of people say we run in a groove, but that 
has nothing to do with marriage. You may be better 
men, but what does matter is that like must marry like. 
You’re streets ahead of a Kaffir, but you’d make a Kaffir 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 209 


girl a bad husband.” He smiled. ” I’m putting the case 
rather strongly, but I’m trying to explain; you’re too dif- 
ferent. Especially, you don’t play games ” 

” Excuse me,” I said, “ we did, and especially at 
Bordeaux. I played tennis when ” 

* Tennis ! ” said Mr. Lawton, and his scorn was im- 
mense. “ Again you give yourself away, Cadoresse. 
Tennis doesn’t come in at all, except for girls. By games 
we mean football and cricket.” 

“ You play other games,” I said, aggressively. 

“ Yes. And we like a man to be handy with an oar, 
a racket or a golf-club, but those aren’t the real games. 
Football and cricket have made us, and again, I want 
you to see that we may be nothing much, but we’re dif- 
ferent. Personally I think games have made us a great 
nation. They’ve taught us courage, discipline, obedience; 
and especially they’ve taught us to be unselfish.” 

“ Unselfish.^ ” I asked, puzzled. 

“ Yes. If you’d played Rugby and had passed to 
another man the ball with which you were racing to the 
goal line, given up your chance to score so that your side 
might score — you’d know.” 

For several minutes Mr. Lawton developed his subject, 
and though I was unshaken in my determination to gain 
Edith, he forced upon me the fact that I was different, 
fundamentally. A new misery crept over me, for I loved 
England almost as much as I loved Edith. It was not only 
my education estranged me. 

” There are other things,” said Mr. Lawton. “ You 
don’t dress as we do, even if you try. Your pleasures are 
different; you go in for art, not in reason as we do, but 
in a funny way; you won’t mind if I call it a bit neurotic. 
Your ideas — your standards — they’re all different.” 

Misery turned to anger. 

“ Then,” I cried, “ all this means that you don’t think 
me good enough, apart from money.” 


300 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ I did not 

“ Would you consent if I had a thousand a year? 

“ Well;, that’s hardly fair. I might, but I shouldn’t like 
it.” 

“ Then it is true I’m not good enough. You wouldn’t 
like it. That is to say that because I’m different I’m 
inferior. Oh, yes, it does mean that; if difference meant 
superiority it would not bar me. You despise the foreigner. 
But — but what am I to do? How can I cease to be dif- 
ferent? I’m more English than I was, for I’ve tried, I’ve 
wanted to ; you don’t know how fond I am of England and 
the English, that I want to settle here, to live here, to be 
an Englishman.” There was a shake in my voice, but 
I repressed a desire to weep, which would have been most 
un-English. “ It isn’t right, it isn’t fair. You let us come 
here, work here, settle here — and then you won’t recognise 
us as human beings, you won’t have us as equals. You’ll 
eat and drink with us, and play with us, and have us in 
your clubs — but you’re only tolerating us, looking down 
on us all the time. It’s horrible, it’s making outcasts of 
us — pariahs.” 

I stopped, breathless, wet-eyed now in spite of my efforts. 
An idea began to gnaw at me: Edith? Did she too look 
down upon me, though carried away by a passing fancy? 
Mr. Lawton was speaking again, begging me not to exag- 
gerate, pointing out how — foreign that was. I hardly lis- 
tened, in my new misery. Now it was my nominal faith 
he attacked. 

“ You’re a Roman Catholic,” he said, “ now ” 

“ I’m an atheist.” 

“ Yes, yes, I know, an agnostic. But still you’ve been 
brought up as a Roman Catholic; we’re Church people, 
and you know very well that I think a man has a right 
to believe what he chooses. There are lots of Roman 
Catholics in England, and I don’t know that I like mixed 
marriages, not only on account of the children, but . . . 
but, I hardly know ...” 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE FATHER 301 

Mr. Lawton hardly knew, but, little by little, his tangled 
sentences managed to convey his meaning to me because 
my mind had become as sensitive as a raw wound. Better 
than he did himself, I grasped the hidden fear and hatred 
the Protestant Englishman feels for Rome, the Jesuits, the 
sumptuousness of the mass. It was a plea for simplicity, 
for freedom from theocracy, for democratic government. 
Through the mouth of Mr. Lawton spoke the ancestor, 
two hundred and fifty years dead, who had shouted “ No 
Popery!” and marched to Newbury with the Parliament 
men, or sailed on the Mayflower to escape the Stuart — 
the popish, foreign Stuart. Religion, even nominal, was 
vital. He believed in the imprint of Rome. He thought 
that it must have made me sly, crafty. He thought it 
must have filtered into my moral standards. 

“You don’t live as we do. Your attitude to women 
— well, I don’t set up to be a saint, but still you know 
what I mean. It’s not my business to inquire how you 
behave, but you’ll not deny that Frenchmen generally lead 
loose lives, get entangled, lose respect for women . . .” 

I tried miserably to make him see how my love for 
Edith had opened my eyes to the meaning of purity, the 
handsome thing, the decent thing; how I had made fetishes 
of chivalry and honour, and would uphold them because I 
had adopted them at a mature age. He disregarded my 
plea; I felt that he doubted me, suspected me; that at 
bottom he did not believe a foreigner could always be 
trusted to tell the truth, to refrain from sharp practice, to 
shield a woman, to play the game — all this because he was 
a foreigner. 

“ No,” he wound up, “ you’ll see one day I’m doing you 
a good turn. You wouldn’t be happy.” 

“ What ! ” I cried. 

“ You wouldn’t. Edith would displease you because she’s 
not so keen, so assertive, so . . . showy as the French- 
women. And you’d jar on her, oh, for all sorts of reasons 
— your accent — your clothes. If you boasted, you don’t do 


302 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


it often now, but sometimes, she’d shiver — and there’s other 
things, being faithful — well ! ” 

I did not reply. It was all over, from his point of view. 

“ Don’t let us say any more about it,” said Mr. Lawton, 
kindly enough. “ I’ve spoken plainly, but you would have 
it, and perhaps it is best to understand one another. Of 
course you can’t come here for a time. You see that? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Later on, when Edith is more sensible. And don’t 
let it interfere with business; we’re very pleased with 
you there. Now promise me that you will not try to 
communicate with Edith in any way.” 

“ I can’t do that.” 

“ Oh, you must.” 

There was a mental tussle ; we were man against man for 
a moment, no longer employer and clerk. Mr. Lawton 
was too generous to use his advantage. 

“ No,” I said at length, “ not unless she says so.” 

Mr. Lawton thought for a moment. Then — 

“ Very well. I don’t mind. I will give you an oppor- 
tunity; I shall tell her I forbid it and she will obey.” 

I looked defiance at the father. Oh, I could rely upon 
the Dresden Shepherdess; she was not strong, but armed 
with my love I trusted her. 

“ Good-night,” said Mr. Lawton, “ have a whisky before 
you go.” 

I shook my head. It was past midnight. Mr. Lawton 
opened the door, started back. Against the wall opposite, 
rigid, still in her evening clothes, Edith stood, her face 
flushed, her eyes downcast. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 

We remained all three as motionless as a tableau vivant. 
I was in the hall, face to face with Edith; behind me, in 
the doorway, I could feel Mr. Lawton. Details crowded 
upon me, Edith, as rigid as if she had been petrified, in 
a gown of white muslin, with little knots of roses circling 
the hem — the flowered wallpaper — the big, modern Lowes- 
toft bowl full of visiting cards. 

Then Mr. Lawton spoke. 

“ Edith ! what are you doing here.^ 

She did not reply. 

“ Go up to your room at once.” Mr. Lawton spoke 
in low, hurried tones, and a diabolical pleasure filled me 
as I realised that the fear that the servants had not gone 
to bed hung heavy over him. But, then, we were in Eng- 
land: the first thing to do was to avoid a scene. Edith 
was not, on her part, going to make a scene either; she 
looked up and said, quite calmly, in a strained voice : 

“ I wanted to see you, father, so I came down. All 
the others are in bed.” 

“ You can see me to-morrow morning,” said Mr. Lawton, 
rather harshly. 

Then I joined in. A sense almost of the theatre urged 
me to have the matter out at once. 

“ Look here, Mr. Lawton,” I said, ‘‘ we both know 
what this means. Edith knew that I was asking leave 
to marry her ; she came down to know your decision. 
There’s nothing very wonderful in that. Well, I can tell 
you, Edith; your father refuses. He does not think me 
good enough ” V 

“ I have told you that that is not the point, Cadoresse, 
303 


304 > THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


but I’m not going over it again. Now, Edith, go to your 
room.” 

Anger filled me, and I spoke quickly, fearing that Edith 
would obey: she might, for most English girls have been 
kicked into the gutter by their fathers and told by their 
mothers that it is ladylike to sit in it. 

“ No, Edith, don’t go. Let’s have it out. Your father 
refuses his consent, and I have refused to accept that as 
final. I said that I would take my dismissal only from 
you. Come, let us both go into the dining-room — and if 
you tell me it’s over — very well.” I turned to Mr. Lawton, 
and I think my tone was ironical : “ I promise I won’t 
make a scene.” 

“ Impossible at this time of night,” said Mr. Lawton. 
“ I said I would give you an opportunity, and I will. Be 
here to-morrow morning at ten and you shall have it. 
Now, good-night. Edith, go to your room.” 

“ Don’t go, Edith,” I said. 

The girl looked at us in turn. Ah, my spirit fainted: 
she did not go, but she did not look like a rebel; her 
father’s will and mine held her motionless as the handker- 
chief in the middle of the rope when there is a tug-of-war. 
I might win, but, if I won, would I win.^ 

“ Go upstairs, Edith,” said Mr. Lawton, rather louder. 

“ Edith, stay,” I murmured, in the low voice of which 
I knew the power. 

“ Don’t you defy me, Cadoresse,” said Mr. Lawton, with 
at last a hint of the theatre. 

“ I am not defying you, Mr. Lawton. All I say is this : 
our engagement has been discovered to-night. I have had 
it out with your son. I have had it out with you. Now I 
am going to have it out with Edith, and we shall know the 
end as well as the beginning. I refuse to go because I 
have a right to know. It is not fair . . . (ah, faint flicker 
of hesitation, Englishman!) — to condemn Edith and me to 
a night of . . . well, to suspense. We have done no 
wrong, it is not fair we should suffer. Now, Mr. Lawton, 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 305 


allow us to go into the dining-room for half-an-hour. When 
we come out^ if Edith sends me away for ever, I’ll ” — (my 
lips twisted into a wretched, wriggling smile) — “ I’ll take 
it like an Englishman.” 

Mr. Lawton hesitated for a moment, looked at me so 
angrily that I felt he would not have hesitated to throw 
me out of the house and to carry Edith upstairs, but for 
the probable scene. Then he gave way. 

“ All right,” he said. “ Perhaps you’re right. Go in, 
you two, and I’ll sit here and wait. Take your time — 
it shan’t be said you didn’t have your chance, Cadoresse; 
put on your coat and take your hat: when you come 
out of that room I don’t want to speak to you again 
to-night.” He stepped away from the door, held it open 
after we had entered the dining-room. “ Edith, under- 
stand this: I forbid you to marry Mr. Cadoresse. I forbid 
the engagement, I forbid you to communicate with Mr. 
Cadoresse after to-night. I have legal rights which I will 
not use, and other weapons which I will not use either. All 
I tell you is that I forbid the engagement, and order you 
to break it off at once. Now you can give Mr. Cadoresse 
his answer.” He closed the door. 

For some moments we did not speak. With downcast 
eyes we faced each other, as if we already knew that we 
were joined in an incomprehensible battle. And when at 
last I looked up I found in Edith’s face a rigidity which 
revealed fear rather than excitement; though my blood was 
hot, as it always pleasurably is when I am going to try 
a throw with Fortune, I too was not without fear, for I was 
looking upon the girl who loved me, who was still affianced 
to me — and I could not know whether, in a few minutes, 
she would still be mine. Perhaps because of this, I did 
not speak, bade the moment tarry and, instead, went up 
to her, took her in my arms. Edith did not resist me; 
indeed, with a sudden movement, she flung both arms 
round my neck and clutched me to her, silent and trembling, 
and pressed her body against me, burying her face upon 


306 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


my shoulder, all taut with an anxiety that increased my 
own. As she grasped me, and as my hands knotted about 
her, as I felt her fingers, cold as any stones, upon my 
neck, and the burning of her cheek upon mine, the whole 
essence of us blended, and a formless, passionate prayer 
came out of me that I might absorb this girl I needed, 
that we might be made one, henceforth dwell in the same 
body. During that moment I believed in God, threw myself 
abased before One who might give me my desire. 

We stood, close-locked, and our breathing was heavy, 
heavy with sobs rather than longing. And, truly enough, 
the sobs were very near. Edith’s breath came quicker and 
quicker; she choked a little, faint sounds rose from the 
back of her throat, horrible, repressed little sounds that 
tore at me, brought tears to my own eyes, for I knew 
she was trying to be brave and finding it difficult, then 
impossible. Now she was crying, almost silently, but as 
if she would never stop; I could feel her tears upon my 
cheek, and, as I half-led and half-carried her to the big 
leather armchair, my eyes were dimmed by my own tears. 
There I held her upon my knees, until her weeping became 
less violent, remembering bitterly that once before only 
had I held her upon my knees, that night when I told her 
my love. At last her tears ceased to flow ; with an uncertain 
hand she made a movement which showed she wanted her 
handkerchief; I gently dried her eyes, while she lay in 
my arms, exhausted, her head thrown back on my shoulder. 
When I had done she gave me a little, cheerless smile and 
said: 

“ My dear, you must let me go. We must talk.” 

“ No, no,” I murmured, and clasped her closer. Instinct 
told me that if I loosed her I lost her. I was right, for 
she struggled to her feet, and at once the sense of nearness, 
of fusion, was no longer there. Without contact we were 
not one, but two. Edith also felt it, wanted it so, refused 
me her hand, as if she guessed that, hand in hand with me. 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 307 


she would not be free. Indeed^ it is hard to reason when 
hands are linked. 

“ Do you still love me } ” I asked. 

“ Can you ask.^ ” she replied. 

I made as if to seize her, but she put out her arm; at 
that distance, now that we stood in front of each other, she 
already seemed lost. 

“ No,” she said, “ wait, Lucien, we must talk. We must 
decide what to do.” 

“ But if you love me,” I said, “ there is nothing to 
decide. I love you, I need you, I can’t do without you 
. . . I’ll wait for you all my life if I must ” 

“ I too,” said Edith, softly, “ I’ll wait, Lucien.” 

“ Ah — my darling — yes, we must wait ; oh, not long, 
I hope. You will tell him you can’t give me up, that 
you’ll marry nobody else — you will tell him you’ll wait 
for ever ” 

“ Yes, Lucien,” said Edith, gravely, “ I’ll tell him. But 
— but you know what he said — he won’t let us be en- 
gaged ” 

“ He won’t let us be engaged ! Well, what does that 
matter.^ We are engaged, we remain engaged until — oh, 
my darling, my love, you’re not going to give me 
up.^ ” 

“ I can’t,” said Edith, weakly, “ you’ve got me. But 
we can’t be engaged if father won’t let us.” 

“ Oh, but we must, we must. You can’t be trodden down 
like this, you will be twenty-one in a few months; then 
you can marry whom you please. You won’t need to obey 
anybody. You will, my darling, you will.^ ” 

“ I can’t,” said Edith, and she shook her head. 

“ But why.^ why.^ ” 

“ I can’t. I can’t defy father. I can’t. I’m not— ^h, 
I’m a coward, I’m no good, but I’m afraid — I can’t.” 

“ You can if you love me.” 

** Oh, don’t hurt me like that, Lucien. I can’t — I can’t 
bear everything that will happen if I do that. Father will 


308 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


be angry, and mother will be on his side, Muriel too — 
she’ll say you haven’t got enough money ” 

“ I shall, don’t be afraid.” 

“ Oh, that’s not what I mean. I know it’s weak of me, 
but I can’t think out whether they’re right or wrong, I 
just can’t stand their all being against me — I know father 
doesn’t understand us, no more does mother, she’s for- 
gotten all about love — and I know Muriel’s hard, and that 
Hugh doesn’t care — but they’d all be against me, and I 
can’t bear it. I can’t live here like that ” 

“ Don’t live here, my darling, come with me. Promise 
me you will, and to-morrow I’ll leave the firm, find another 
billet, marry you. Oh, it won’t be long. You love me, 
don’t you ? you wouldn’t want me to earn much ? ” ■ 

“ It’s not that, it’s not that.” Edith shook her head 
wearily. “You know I love you, Lucien; you know I’d 
marry you and live in one room, but I can’t. Oh,” she 
added quickly, “ I know what you’ll say: if we go away 
together soon it won’t matter their being against me, for 
I shan’t live with them, but they’d still be against me, and 
I’d know it: it’d be almost the same thing.” 

I did not reply, for no concrete argument avails against 
the imponderable. I was frightened, too, for this height- 
ened my sense of difference: no French girl could have 
thought such a thing, have been . . . mystical. 

“ You see,” Edith went on, “ I can’t disobey father. It 
would be wrong.” 

“ Wrong,” I cried, “ but, Edith, when one loves . . .” 

“ It would be wrong,” she repeated, obstinately. “ Per- 
haps he doesn’t understand, but he’s my father. Besides, 
he’s so fond of me. Oh, Lucien, you don’t know how fond 
he is of me. When I was at school he used to write to 
me every week, to send me extra pocket-money hidden in 
the lining of ties, because we weren’t allowed to have much 
— and it’s still me he likes to take out alone. He’s so fond 
of me, I couldn’t hurt him, I couldn’t . . 

“ He’s being cruel to-night,” 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED 309 

Yes — but he thinks he’s doing his best for me . . . it’s 
because he’s so fond of me. Oh^ Lucien, don’t make me 
hurt him.” 

But it’s me you’re hurting/’ I cried. I seized her 
hands, clasped her against me. “ You’re hurting me, don’t 
you see that.^ I love you, I want you, my love, I need 
you . . . and you want to give me up. Oh, yes, you do, 
you wouldn’t obey if you didn’t. No, it’s not true, forgive 
me, my darling, forgive me.” I pressed kisses upon her 
bent neck. “ No, I know you love me, and it’s only because 
you’re full of the sweetness, the tenderness that I love, 
that you think of giving me up. But you mustn’t, you 
mustn’t . . .” 

Clasping her hard in my arms I covered her face with 
kisses; in broken phrases I begged her to cleave to me, 
to defy the world for me; I strained to give her some of 
my own energy, to exasperate, to inflame her; I was all 
artifice and yet all my artifices were spontaneous, for I was 
trying every door as may, without much thought, a man 
who is seeking for an outlet from a burning building. She 
lay passive in my arms under the hot stream of my words, 
too weak to cry, to respond to my passion. Despair seized 
me, for I realised the quality of her love for me. It 
was absolute, would shrink from no agony of waiting, 
but it had no activity, no courage. It could bear every- 
thing, but do nothing. It was all yield, devoid of aggres- 
sion. Edith would love me all her life, but, overlaid by 
education and tradition, she might be lost to me. 

“ Ah, Edith,” I murmured, “ don’t give in. Fight for 
me.” 

“ I can’t fight,” said Edith, in a low, tired voice. 

“ But you must, you must. Everybody must fight.” I 
released my hold of her, retaining only her hands. “ You 
must fight, that’s life, or die. Fighting is the destiny 
of man, and nothing good can be had of life, unless you 
fight for it. You are born with everything against you, 
the law, your parents, your family, conventions, fashions; 


310 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


there’s the law telling you what you mustn’t do^ your 
parents telling you what to do^ your family asking 3mu 
to consider their feelings, and conventions saying that they 
must dominate you because they are there. Oh, don’t, 
don’t,” I cried, passionately, ” don’t give in. It’s nothing 
but a conspiracy — it’s a fraud — it doesn’t exist. You only 
think it exists, all that. If you say you won’t obey, it 
all falls down. The world doesn’t want to give you the 
good things; my darling, there aren’t enough good things 
for everybody, and if you want them you must take them. 
Oh, don’t give me up; be bold, be free. Take your happi- 
ness, my darling, take it by force. Force is the only way, 
force is the only thing that makes you fine. Until you’ve 
fought you’re no good, and it’s better to have fought and 
lost than not to have fought. Fight for me, fight for love, 
and you’ll win, you can, you can ” 

“ I can’t fight,” said Edith, miserably. “ I can’t.” 

There was a long pause. I dropped her hands, looked 
with new eyes at her white face, her downcast eyes round 
which were appearing shadows which would, on the morrow, 
be purple rings. My plea for contest had excited me, 
and an impersonal fury seized me when I thought of the 
soft people of the world who could not or would not 
fight. For I am a fighting-cock, and I despise the barn- 
door fowls; I know that the barn-door fowls do not think 
much of me, call me braggart, and creature of bombast, 
and seeker of brabbles, but that does not trouble me: I 
know that I am made of hard, sharp stuff. And, as I 
looked upon myself in hateful complacency, my impersonal 
fury became personal, for the softness of Edith galled me. 
Ah, I had wanted that softness when I was strong; now 
that victory seemed less certain I wanted to find in Edith 
a useful hardness. 

What do we want of women then? Vanity that is 
humble, courage with a hint of cowardice, purity soaked 
with passion. It is too much to ask. And now I, who 
had stretched out hungry lips for honey, raged because 


THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE BETROTHED Sll 


there was no vinegar in the precious store. She could not 
fight for me. Ah ! then she would not. She did not love 
me. I was no lover of hers, but merely a schoolgirl’s 
dream. Cadoresse, you strutting gallant, you had thrown 
yourself away. 

“ You can’t,” I said in an unexpectedly harsh voice. 
“ You can’t Indeed. Then you do not love me.” . . . 

Edith did not reply, but sat down in the armchair and 
hid her face in her hands. I was too angry to care; I 
wanted to break my Dresden Shepherdess, as a mischievous 
child, untaught by experience, smashes a toy to see whether 
there is anything inside. 

“ You do not love me,” I repeated. “ You have not 
got the faculty. You are like the rest of your people, you 
do not know what love means. Answer,” I cried angrily, 
after a pause, “ but no, I suppose you won’t answer. 
You’re like the rest of the English — ^you’re not going to 
defend yourself — you’re too afraid of making a scene. Oh, 
I know you now, you and all the rest, and your damned 
discipline, your damned hypocrisy. You don’t feel much, 
and what you feel you’ll hide — you’ll let me say what 
I like, but you’ll keep your temper — you’ll hurt me because 
you’re too proud to speak — and you’ll hurt yourself because 
you’re too proud to cry out. You’re not human beings at 
all, none of you — you’ve had it fogged out of you; you 
can’t scream, and cry out, and rejoice, you can’t thirst 
and hunger and rage — it’s all gone, all the humanity, all 
the fine beastliness of man. Civilised, dried-up, mummified. 
Where’s your blood gone to? Speak, I say ... or did 
you go to Winchester with Hugh ? ” 

Edith’s hands trembled upon her face. 

” I see, you won’t speak. I suppose it isn’t all pride 
and education then. Perhaps it’s not worth while? Per- 
haps you see, after all, that I’m not good enough — too 
different, as your father says. Perhaps you won’t fight 
because you don’t want to, because I’m not worth 
fighting for. I see now — I understand. North is North 


S12 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


and South is South_, and never the twain shall meet. I 
ought not to have left my country, and the women who 
are like my mother ” 

Edith’s hands dropped into her lap, but my anger had 
given way to a bitterness so cold that the twist of her lips, 
the dilation of her eyes inspired in me no pity. Indeed, 
her pain filled me with an incomprehensible delight. I 
had hurt her, I must hurt her again. 

“ I suppose you think I’d better go back to them,” I 
sneered. “ Perhaps you’re right, perhaps you’re giving me 
good advice. Well, I am going. I am, I am ” 

Edith’s features did not move; they were set in their 
strained lines, but I heard her whisper : “ Lucien ! ” 

“ Too late,” I said, sombrely. “ It’s good-bye.” 

I seized my hat and coat, and, before turning to go, 
looked at her again. She did not rise, but held out her 
hands : 

“If you come back, Lucien,” she murmured, and a knot 
of furrows formed between her eyebrows; “if ever you 
come back ” 

“If I come back ! ” I cried. “ Oh, indeed, if I come 
back ” 

I can hear myself laughing as I opened the door, 
laughing as I did not know I could laugh. 


CHAPTER V 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 
I 

I DO not remember very well what thoughts occupied 
me as I went down the steps of the house at Lancaster 
Gate, except one: “ I shall go home, back to France/* 
What else, indeed, was there to do, now that I knew the 
English to be marshalled against me in phalanx? And 
though I did not actually go back to France for some time, 
though I preferred to go to the devil, the thought clove 
to me. For home-sickness insists. In France, I felt, they 
would know me, understand me so well as to take no notice 
of me: and I did not want to be noticed just then. I 
wanted to slink away into a corner where I should see 
nothing, where nothing would see me. I did not want to 
read English papers, to speak with Englishmen, to interest 
myself in English things; I wanted rest, mental sleep, as 
if my mind had been exhausted by its three terrific bouts. 
I found sleep, for it comes all too readily to the young 
alien who lives in furnished rooms; he has but to abandon 
effort for society to forsake him, as a publisher who aban- 
dons advertisement sees his circulation fade away. 

When I had closed behind me the door of my bedroom, 
having found my way home as instinctively as does a 
pigeon, I experienced a great sense of relief. The struggle 
was over, and I was too tired to feel my defeat, even to 
regret Edith: I was numbed; I pulled off my clothes, 
which felt heavy and complicated, threw myself on the 
bed, too tired to put on my pyjamas; I must then have 
instinctively crawled under the bedclothes, for, when I 
woke up, late next day, I found I had slept in my under- 

313 


314 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


clothes, leaving the light switched on.. I made no effort 
to go to Barbezan, allowed my landlady to think me unwell 
and to bring me my lunch in bed. I was still torpid, 
and when I tried to think, while the setting sun fell on 
my window, I could not pull together any mental threads. 
I was contented, contented as one is when the surgical 
operation is over and pain has not yet come. 

It was in the night I decided to go baek to Barbezan 
the next day. I found in myself no hatred for Lawton 
and his son; my work waited and I saw no reason why 
I should rebel against it. Indeed, I think I surprised my 
masters when I returned, coolly excusing my absence by 
a plea of illness which they had, tactfully enough, fore- 
stalled on my behalf. Neither commented on the happen- 
ings of the fourteenth. Mr. Lawton handed me a sheaf 
of bills of lading, so that I might apportion them among 
the available Lisbon boats; later in the day he sent for 
me to reprimand me for having arranged an illegal deck 
cargo from London, which should have been taken at 
Antwerp; and Hugh began to settle with me the details 
of the transfer of his work to me, which was to be made 
at the end of the month. We did not discuss our private 
affairs; we did not want to, and I think the Lawtons were 
so relieved by my attitude that an unwonted courtesy born 
of remorse stole into their speech. 

That is all I remember. In the office I seem,* for a 
fortnight, to have gone about my duties as efficiently as 
usual, subject to the errors into which my imagination 
precipitated me from time to time. Out of the office I 
lived my ordinary life: occasional games of chess with 
Stanley, long walks at night (purposeless now and proof 
against temptation), evenings at theatres or music-halls; 
on one of the Sundays I sculled all alone from Hampton 
Court to Staines and back; I was so calm, so ordinary 
that I deceived Stanley, at whose house I went to dine. 
I did not quite deceive him, for he said; 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


315 


Don t know what’s up with you, Cadoresse ; you’re 
quieter than you were. I suppose you’re turning into an 
Englishman after all.” 

That stab should have roused me, but the time had not 
come: my emotional chord had been strained and did not 
vibrate. It needed time to recover its sensitiveness, and 
little by little, I found it did, that grief was stealing upon 
me, slowly as a cloud on a light wind across the moon. I 
did not yet suffer acutely, but I began to feel an atmosphere, 
a peculiar one, for it affected me in the office. Perhaps 
Barker first stimulated me when he asked me, elaborately 
casual, whether I’d been to the Lawtons’ lately. I replied 
by a curt negative, but I was put on my guard; soon I 
discovered that I interested the staff, that Tyler and 
Merton came to talk to me of “ life in the West End ” 
in a way which suggested impalpable raillery; Farr, who 
seldom addressed me, took the trouble to tell me that there 
was nothing like a decent country girl. When asked to 
define “ country ” he fell back on the girls “ down his 
way.” I managed to hold myself in, but I realised that 
all this was not fortuitous, that they knew something, if 
not everything, that the facts of my struggle had leaked 
out. How.^ I shall never know, for facts leak through 
crevices as small as those which, on board ship, will let 
out steam. From Mrs. Lawton to a friend, from her to 
some husband in the City, thence to his head clerk and 
on to our own . . . thus, perhaps. I was not sure that 
the clerks knew, but I suspected that they did, and I began 
to hate them, to fear them as a weak thing fears a strong 
one that may hurt it, and to hate them more because I 
feared them. The fear was good for me, strong alkali 
which made me wince but revived me; by hating I began to 
regain my strength, my manliness. But, because I did 
not know, because the English did not boldly come out 
and laugh at me, I could not have the rough-and-tumble 
I needed to make me active again. 

Then the thing came. One morning, as I sat down 


316 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


at my desk, I found a sheet of paper pinned on my blotter ; 
on it stood: 

“A Froggy would a wooing go, 

A Cadoresse, a Knight just so. 

But the English Rose said ‘ oh, no, no ’ 

To Cadoresse, the Knight just so.” 

I think I read the doggerel five or six times to make 
quite sure of its application to me. I felt my face burn. 
. . . Yes, they knew, not everything, for they evidently 
thought it was Edith had refused the Frenchman. A 
spasm shook me, a spasm of rage so violent that, had I 
not then been alone, I should have fallen on the first 
man I saw and tried to tear out his windpipe. But it 
was early, and I was able to contain myself when Barker 
came in, to say nothing to the others, though I covertly 
glanced at their faces to surprise in them the irony which 
would expose their guilt. They remained impassive, so 
English in their attitude of aloofness that I had to repress 
my desire to go to each one of the staff and suddenly show 
him the rhyme, asking him: “Did you write this?” I 
did not do it, for I was now English enough myself to 
shrink a little from scenes; to this day I do not know 
who the author was, for there was no clue. The doggerel 
was typed on one of our machines and on our own paper; 
it might be the work of any one of the staff of thirty, for 
nothing proved that my affairs did not interest those with 
whom I did not associate every day. 

For several days I lived with the thing; having learned 
it by heart I found myself repeating it to myself over 
and over again, some other self forcing it upon my sentient 
self and repeating it to me, insistently, monotonously, 
maddeningly. A little tune composed itself and a demon 
began to sing it to me as I walked, even when I stopped 
my ears with both hands and concentrated so hard that 
sweat started from my forehead; sometimes the demon 
became fanciful, introduced variations: 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


317 


‘‘A Froggy would a wooing go, 

A WOOING GO, A WOOING GO, 

A Froggy would a wooing go, 

‘ Heigh ho ! ’ said Edie . . . 

A Cadoresse, a Knight just so, 

A Knight just so, a Knight just so. 

Is NOT A MAN QUITE ‘ COMME IL FAUT,* 

Quite ‘comme il faut,’ quite ‘comme il faut* . . 

I could not get rid of it. It rumbled at me from the 
wheels as I rode in the Tube, it tinkled out of barrel-organ 
tunes, it screamed itself out of the wind . . . and when 
I woke in the middle of the night, it came, low and ob- 
stinate, out of the innermost Me. It was at night I learned 
to bite my pillow so that I might not shriek out what 
I was beginning to believe: “ I"m going mad ... I am 
mad. . . 

One eftect of the rhyme was notable. My hatred of 
the clerks did not fog my brain, but cleared it; I ceased 
to see them as magical Englishmen, began to watch and 
analyse them, to find a queer, malignant pleasure in seeing 
the ugly where I had once seen the splendid. Farr gave 
me the first indication by suddenly asking me to come to 
Hornsey and see his wife, the most wonderful woman in 
the world, his son Norman and the roses of his garden 
while they were still blooming. 

“ You’ll find it all right,” he said, “ in the Edgerley 
Road. ‘Farrfield’ is the name of the house.” 

I refused, almost rudely, for I suspected that this sudden 
outburst of friendliness from my old enemy meant that 
he wanted to gloat over my downfall or that the most 
wonderful woman in the world wished to find out all 
about it. But, as he explained that he had called “ Farr- 
field ” after himself when the house was rlew and name- 
less, I saw him and his class. I watched him and his 
fellows, engaged them in conversation so that their acci- 
dental confidences might swell the total of my hatred ; 
everything that was despicable and snobbish in them 
cheered me, for it convinced me that my race was not. 


318 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


after all, inferior to theirs. I know with what delight I 
observed that Barker reproved the new office-hoy for stick- 
ing two halfpenny stamps on a letter instead of a penny 
one. “ It doesn’t look well,” said Barker. Dull, con- 
ventional fool . . . as if it mattered to a free spirit ! 

Another day it was Tyler, who was about to be married, 
telling Merton while I listened that he was going to have 
a Turkey carpet . . . that is an Axminster Turkey; and 
a grand piano ... an upright grand. I smiled as I pre- 
tended to write; I smiled more broadly as Tyler boasted 
of his best man to be, for the latter was quite the gent, 
a medical student . . . dental. Whether it was Farr 
suspecting Mayfair of every vice and kneeling at Hornsey 
in idiotic adoration of Regent’s Park, or old Purkis 
expressing disapproval of a system which paid Harry 
Lauder a wage superior to that of the Prime Minister, 
but accepting the situation when he found that his wife 
appreciated the comedian, I felt surrounded by a hateful 
group of snobs, frauds, men of the villa breed. So much 
to the good: if I could not be an Englishman, at least I 
was no suburban. 

But the emptiness grew round me as my aloofness 
increased; I paid the penalty of the new status I was 
acquiring in my own mind. Unable to call on the Lawtons, 
shunning the Raleighs, the Kents and their circle, afraid 
to go to Stanley lest he should vivisect me, I fell back 
upon myself, upon my bitter loneliness. Neither work, 
nor the facile pleasures of the London streets, from which 
too often I now returned unsatisfied, availed me. For 
I could not drink; the third whisky stupefied instead of 
exhilarating me, and I was unwell the next day; and 
the light flirtations of omnibus tops and London parks 
had been spoiled for me by my great adventure. 

Edith had reconquered me, and now I suffered as I 
had never suffered before. Her light, graceful body, her 
clear laugh, the soft look of her eyes when they rested 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


S19 


upon me, her voice, suddenly low when it spoke of love, 
everything of her rose up before me now that I had lost 
her, more precious and rarer than ever before. Too 
desperate and too proud to resume in Lancaster Gate the 
sentry-go of my early gallantry, I was not able to resist 
looking anxiously into the faces of girls as I passed them 
in the street, hoping a little it would be Edith I saw, and 
fearing that it might be Edith, and hoping too that some- 
thing, the arch of an eyebrow or the curve of a lip, would 
recall her to me. Sometimes I tried to drive the image 
away, reasoned with myself and told myself I was senti- 
mental, neurotic, that I must forget her and make another 
life; but I reacted very soon from those moods and, leaning 
back in some comfortable chair,' gave myself up to a day- 
dream with a delicious sense of foolishness and guilt. 
Whether I loved her then, I am not sure, for so much 
hatred mingled with my passion, but certainly she occupied 
and filled me as she had never done before, and often she 
called to me, faintly and wistfully; sometimes my mind 
clothed her in a white pannier skirt, all flowered with 
pink roses, dressed her hair high and powdered it, set a 
patch upon her delicate painted cheek and then bade her 
curtsey to me as an actual Dresden Shepherdess dethroned 
from her pedestal. In other moments she was neat and 
shirtwaisted, in others yet, all languid, in gold-flecked 
gauze, upon a bank of peonies. And often I ended by 
weeping, by digging my nails into my palms because I did 
not want to weep: for the joy one has not had turns to 
bitterness; it may be that St. Anthony suffered more after 
than during the temptation. 

One dream never came to me, a dream of reconquest. 
Edith had fled back into the ideal land whence I had 
called her to me; no longer Edith, she had rejoined the 
phantom English girls among whom I had thought to find 
my mate. In those days she seemed, in her dream-land, 
to belong to another world, to live in some Eden from 
which I had been driven, never to return, because being 


320 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


foreign I was unclean. And yet I longed for her^ wanted, 
needed her; deeper and deeper I sank into gloom and 
isolation, and I wanted her with a more insistent ache. 
For time does not heal a wound when both heart and pride 
are sore: that is too great a complication. I needed her 
hopelessly, well knowing that whosoever hath drunk shall 
evermore be thirsty, but resigned myself to everlasting 
thirst. 


II 

The year was dying. But four days before, on Christ- 
mas Eve, I had been handed an envelope in which, together 
with a Christmas box, was a typed notice to “ No. 12 ” 
that his salary was raised to three hundred a year, for 
Barbezan & Co., who wished to allay jealousy among the 
staff, concealed from the typists the names of those for- 
tunates who benefited by rises. And now, gloomily enough, 
I was substituting pleasure for happiness ; I had been 
to the theatre, in the stalls, as I could afford a stall on 
three hundred a year, and now sat before some cold chicken 
and half a bottle of Moselle in a big Strand restaurant. 
I had thought to find there gaiety, and there gaiety lived 
indeed, for the air was filled with excited babble, with the 
band’s impartial selections from “ La Boheme ” and “ The 
Country Girl.” Much light, a red glow on the velvet 
seats, glitters on the gildings of the walls and about the 
crystal of the chandeliers. A general impression of move- 
ment, easy and fleeting adventure, and for me a feeling of 
separateness, almost disembodiment. I had not felt my 
loneliness in the theatre, but I felt it bitterly in this room 
where everybody had come in twos or in groups, where such 
as came singly nodded carelessly to friendly supper-parties 
and wandered on to some appointed table. I had no ap- 
pointed table, sat at my own as a dog before its platter, 
and a sourness filled me as I looked at the couples, the 
dozens, the scores of couples, the parties of four which 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


321 


were only duplicated couples. Young Englishmen in per- 
fect evening clothes_, with girls who were not of their class, 
but lovely in their excitement; swarthy foreigners show- 
ing London to handsome London girls and ignorant of the 
contempt the English felt for them ; middle-aged men, 
some with beaming, some with irritable wives, and some 
with the obvious unwed, divided in their allegiance between 
woman and wine, I hated them all. I hated their gaiety, 
their freedom from care, the security of the English, the 
ignorance, boldness of the foreigners; I hated them be- 
cause they were not alone, because they had at least the 
illusion of love, because the bubble of their self-esteem had 
not been pricked. And in the horror of my solitude I felt 
ready for any expedient, for any adventure, however low, 
if only I might be gulled with pretty speeches, hold some 
falsely friendly hand ... if only I could cease to be alone. 
. . . And still the double door revolved in its glass case, 
hiding and revealing these ghosts that went in and out 
endlessly. Ghosts! yes, they were ghosts to me, ghosts 
whom my touch would dispel. . . . 

Two girls seemed to have forced themselves into one 
compartment of the door, for there was laughing and shrill 
giggling as they bundled together into the room. I looked 
at them carelessly, hating them too because they laughed. 
But one of them interested me. Her clothes held my atten- 
tion, for their fashion had anticipated the taste of London, 
recalled a picture I had seen a day or two before in a 
French paper. She was small, slim, wore a Nattier blue 
coat and skirt over a white lingerie blouse which ended 
in a large jabot; her hat was just larger than anybody 
else’s, and its Nattier blue satin bows stood out like 
enormous wings; as she came towards me, slowly, fol- 
lowed by her friend, who was taller and dressed in more 
commonplace khaki, I recognised her, and my heart began 
to beat as she walked down the aisle between the marble- 
topped tables. Just before she reached my table our eyes 
met and, for a moment, she looked at me incredulously, and 


322 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I had time to see warm colour rise in her cheeks, her 
brown eyes sparkle. Then she took two quick steps 
forward and, smiling broadly, held out her hand. 

“Lor!” she said, “it’s old tea-caddy. Fancy meeting 
You.” 

I took her hand, which was bare and warm and, as I 
held it, recognised the familiar breadth of the palm, the 
sudden tapering of the pointed fingers; the red mouth, 
redder than in the past, for it was skilfully painted with 
lip-salve, smiled over the perfect teeth, and there was 
an air of artifice about the brown hair, now done in a 
score of curls. Maud looked rakish, almost defiant, but 
also genuinely pleased to see me, and as I smiled at her 
I knew that I too was glad, that I was no longer alone. 
She laughed nervously, freed her hand and turned to her 
friend: 

“ Allow me to introduce,” she said, solemnly, “ Miss 
Serena P. Huggins, of Chicago, where the pork comes from 
. . . Mr. Cadoresse.” 

“ Pleased to meet you, Mr. CaDOR'ess,” said Miss 
Huggins. 

I smiled as we shook hands, for this was the first time 
I heard the American accent, and to be called CaDOR'ess 
amused me. 

Also Serena was very attractive, much taller than I 
had realised at first, slim but absolutely straight; her 
perfect tailoring exaggerated her length of bust and limb; 
on her long neck she carried a small, aggressive head, 
round which were coiled endless plaits of thick, glittering 
black hair. A mat skin, warmed with pink and some 
yellow, a thin, defiant mouth, so dark red as to appear 
brown, unflinching black eyes and almost straight black 
eyebrows, all this was so pronounced, so assertive that I 
thought of Diana, the fierce huntress, as I said: 

“ I too am charmed. Miss Huggins; indeed, if anything 
could increase the pleasure of meeting Miss Hooper again, 
it would be making your acquaintance.” 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


323 


“ There ! Serrie, old dear,” said Maud. ” What did I 
tell you? There isn’t another can tell the tale like him. 
But don’tcher care, Serrie, he told it to me before he told 
it you and it’s the same old tale. Still, I’m not going to 
be hard on you, Caddy ; you can stand us supper and we’ll 
kiss and be friends . . . that is, if you’re all on your 
lonesome.” 

” Yes,” I said, ” I’m alone. Sit down, both of you, 
and order what you like.” 

” What I like ! ” said Maud, staring at me. “ My, 
you’re up in the flies, Caddy. What’d you say if I made 
it fizz ? ” 

“ I should order fizz.” 

“Well, I never! Have they made you a bloomin’ 
partner? or what?” 

Before I could reply Serena had interposed: 

“ Say, Maudie, what’s the matter with fizz, anyway ? 
We ain’t on the water wagon, either of us. What’s the 
good of makin’ a poor mouth about it? ” 

As I called the waiter I swiftly contrasted the humble 
attitude of the English girl with the cool, proprietorial 
tone of the American. But I had little time for analysis, 
as Maud, who seemed to have forgotten the quarrel on 
which we parted, had a great deal to say: having to 
explain me to Serena while she gave me some account 
of her last year’s history, her conversation was a little 
mixed. 

“ Well, no, I’m not exactly on the halls. I did do a 
turn, eccentric dancing and, my word, it wasn’t half eccen- 
tric, and I was on the road for a bit after I gave Bert 
the chuck. You remember Bert, don’t you, Caddy? Oh, 
don’tcher care, it’s all over, absoballylutely. You see, 
Serrie, this is my long-lost fiasco and love of my youth; 
he got the pip because of Bert, and as I wasn’t having 
any of his old buck we said a tearful farewell, I don’t 
think. . . . Oh, yes,” she replied to my question, “ it was 
pretty rotten, being on the road, but a shop’s a shop 


324 > THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


and don’t you forget it. I got the bird one night and 
that’s what put the lid on it . . . though if you want 
to know it was the boss. What d’you think he said, one 
night, the. ...” I was enlightened as to the morality of 
managers in general. “ Fetched him one on the koboko,” 
Maud summed up, “ and hooked it. What am I doing 
now.^ Nothing extra, walking on in the second line; it 
ain’t all ’oney, eh, Serrie? ” 

“ It’s a rotten dope,” said Serena, fiercely. Two 
shows a day, sixteen changes, an’ ninety-four steps to 
climb each change. I’m goin’ on the jag next week. 
Lookee here,” she added, as Maud protested that drink 
wouldn’t mend matters, “ this show don’t go on ; do you 
know the money, Mr. CaDOR'ess? Ten dollars a week, 
an’ there’s a dollar for the agent, an’ a shillin’ for the 
dresser, an’ sixpence for the callboy, an’ sixpence for the 
doorkeeper — do you get me, Steve ? ” 

My explanation that my name was not Steve was re- 
ceived with shrieks of laughter, during which Serena forgot 
her grievance and, little by little, as I learned to translate 
these girls’ extraordinary language, I gained an idea of 
Maud’s adventures. She had “ eloped ” with Bert Burge 
a week after I left St. Mary’s Terrace, and she did not 
conceal that the word “ marriage ” had never been pro- 
nounced. She had gone on the halls as an eccentric 
dancer and singer, had been the partner in a knockabout 
with Bert; then, tiring of him or deserted by him (I never 
found out the truth), she had gone on tour wuth a third- 
rate musical comedy company. After the episode of the 
bird and the smack on the manager’s koboko, provoked 
by her faithfulness to her temporary companion, the low 
com., she had been out of a shop for two months. There 
was a little break in her story which I did not try to 
bridge. Then she came to London, made friends with 
Serena in a teashop, and was through her engaged in the 
variety theatre where a mongrel entertainment, made up 
of singing, dancing, acting and parading occupied her 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


325 


twice a day. Now she was happy enough, could count on 
thirty-four shillings a week, and lived in freedom with 
Serena at Harewood Avenue. She had come into the 
restaurant on the chance of “ getting off ” with “ one of 
the boys.” 

All this came out swiftly, with a metallic rattle of gaiety, 
sprinkled and spiced everywhere by the theatro-Cockney 
ironies of “ tain’t so likely ” and “ never let it be said.” 
Maud was gay, fiercely, defiantly gay, and fiercely, de- 
fiantly cynical. Also her language had changed : here 
was no longer the mild slang picked up at Mother Tin- 
man’s, but a blend of the vilest Cockney phrases and of 
theatrical tags, sprinkled here and there with oaths; I 
had yet to learn that no words were too foul now, when 
Maud was angry: the Mile End streak ran right through 
her. She was vulgar, and became vulgar, vital, in a way 
which clashed with her cynicism, made me think of those 
sophisticated hot omelettes in whose heart is concealed 
an ice. That night cynicism was in the ascendant; curls, 
paint, the “ pussy-cats ” of make-up which still stuck in 
the corners of her eyes, accorded with her new attitude, 
her new name, “ Maudie Devon.” I asked her why she 
had adopted it. 

“Fetches the boys,” she said, “least I hope it will; 
got a newspaper chap in Dudley to put me in as ‘ Maudie 
D.’ It’d be worth twenty quid a week to be Mordedee 
. . . and I can’t get a line in this show,” she added, 
viciously. 

Serena did not speak much. She ate and drank vora- 
ciously, replying only by short sentences to the remarks I 
made to her out of politeness. I wanted to talk to Maud, 
who attracted me now more than ever, perhaps because 
the good looks of the girl had turned into the brazen 
beauty of the woman, perhaps because in my loneliness 
and misery my heart was as susceptible to temptation as 
is a weakened body to disease. And Maud’s frankness, her 
aggressive boldness, fascinated me; the insolence with 


326 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


which she dropped hints of her various companionships; 
her fierce and open taste for a good time, all this was so 
easy after the reticences of another class that I found 
myself sliding, and gladly. Maud told me in plain words 
that she had gone to the devil because I didn’t care for 
her, and when I publicly took her hand, did not resist. 
Apparently she didn’t care what happened. 

“ Say, honey,” Serena remarked, yawning as if the 
story bored her, “ it’s twelve-thirty ; we’ve got to beat it. 
You’re the sweetest thing, Mr. CaDOR'ess, and that’s 
why you’ll drive us home in a taxicab.” 

The fine black eyes commanded as they wheedled. In 
the cab the American lay back as if asleep after inviting 
us to “ canoodle ” all we wanted. And Maud, after de- 
claring that spooning was O-R-P-H, orph, allowed me to 
take her in my arms and kiss her lips as the full lights 
of Piccadilly Circus streamed into the cab. 


Ill 

What did I feel? I wondered, as the cab took me to 
Cambridge Street. I often asked myself that question 
as my companionship with the two girls grew closer, and 
found it difficult of solution, for I had emerged from my 
ten weeks of insensibility without having thoroughly 
recovered my capacity for introspection; some of it had 
returned to me after the incident of the rhyme, for I had 
been stung, but I was not yet a sentient animal; those 
mental chords were still strained. I had a vague idea 
that, after Edith, I needed not a lover, but a soul into 
which to pour my soul, a woman with whom to mix tears. 
And yet I knew that I was glad of the girls’ society, that 
their curious talk pleased me, and that I could be amused 
by stories of what Gwendolen Harcourt said to her boy, 
by descriptions of the “ bucketing ” Tozer gave his com- 
pany at rehearsal, and the perpetual spicy stories which 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


327 


found their way “ behind ” from Throgmorton Street. It 
was easy^ for these girls were used to the foreigner, the 
rich Brazilian and the German Jew, distinguished little 
between the Honourable John Helbert (the candidate for 
Serena) and old Mosenberg, who cast over the whole of 
the chorus a favourable eye; here were no insults for the 
Frenchman; so long as he had a decent coat to his back, 
money to pay for a supper or a cab, and was not too dull 
company, the Frenchman was just a man. 

That was good. I could fall into gallicisms now, and 
merely be called a “ date ” ; there were no more imper- 
turbable disapprovals, no more classifications. So, as I 
let myself slide, surrendered myself to Maud’s heady 
charm, I felt as happy as a criminal who has confessed, 
for I was not pretending any more; I was myself, a lover 
in search of facile adventure. It came, for I found that 
Maud had preserved something of the faint taste she had 
had for me ; grafted on those remains, on the sentimentality 
which inclined her towards me because she had known 
me a very long time and in other surroundings, was the 
boldness and the looseness which had come to her as she 
draggled her way from sordid, mercenary companionships 
to complaisances dictated hy policy, and to indulgences in 
which sensuousness played a lesser part than indiffer- 
ence. 

Maud was a creature born again; she had seized her 
politic morals and hurled them behind her. She was 
abandoned, not because she wanted to be such, but because 
she didn’t care. One evening I was to fetch her at the 
stage door at six, to take her to dinner and bring her back 
in time for the evening show. I waited some minutes 
under the porch of the theatre opposite, for fine rain was 
falling. With me was a little crowd; there were two 
obvious mothers, elderly, tired and wonderfully vigilant, 
as if they feared that their girls would be kidnapped at 
the door, several “ boys ” in fancy waistcoats and birth- 
day boots; there was also somebody’s girl pal, rakish and 


328 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


still powder-flecked. Every time the door opened, to dis- 
close in a cube of light the doorkeeper, who sat in his 
box, and to let out a stage hand or some principal, there 
was a slight stir in the crowd. Hungrily they watched 
the theatrical folk, the dressers, members of the band, 
and smart girls who furled their skirts and ran under the 
drizzle. But the tenseness of it amused me, showed me 
how little I mattered now, for nobody seemed to wonder 
with what member of the chorus I might be entangled; 
the tenseness was purely individual. There was nobody 
now to criticise me, my morals, manners or standards. 
Indeed, the attitude went further than I thought, for the 
door was opened suddenly to show me Maud, in tights 
and spangled bodice, beckoning to me to come in. 

I crossed the alley, followed by the envious eyes of the 
“ boys,” entered with hesitation the cube of light. It was 
a dingy little place, no more than a corridor between the 
two stone staircases that rose to the right and left. The 
doorkeeper threw me so hostile a look that, in response 
to a wink from Maud, I handed him a coin, half-a-crown 
I think. 

“ This ain’t allowed,” he grumbled; “ ’urry up.” 

Maud seized my arm and drew me two paces away, 
but I did not notice her first sentences, so striking did she 
appear in her full make-up. Her face was marked with 
red and white patches and lines which made her look like 
a clown; both her upper eyelids were painted deep blue; 
she had moulded her mouth into a how with thick red 
salve, while every one of her eyelashes was clothed with 
black grains at the base. She wore pink tights, and a 
close-fitting shell entirely covered with gold crescents and 
multicoloured paillettes; glittering wire and gauze wings 
stood out from her shoulders, and smaller wings rose from 
her piled brown hair. 

** Couldn’t let your youthful heart get sick with hope 
deferred, old dear,” said Maud. “ We’ve had a call to put 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


829 


a new girl through. Old Pinky-Gills gave Dora d’Esterre 
the sack this afternoon to put in a new girl he picked 
up at a night club. That’s the third call we’ve had this 
week to please his lordship. You wouldn’t think he was 
a thing of the past, the ” 

“Maud, darling! ” I protested, for another couple stood 
whispering at the foot of the second staircase. 

“ Oh, don’tcher care. Anyhow, I can’t go out, and I 
can’t stop.” 

“ Can’t you say you’re unwell ? ” 

“ Rush of brains to the feet ! Tell that to old Pinky- 
Gills! No, I’ll meet you at the Bank to-morrow, at half- 
past twelve, as per use, and you can take me to lunch. 
Now don’t be sulky.” 

I looked down at her, and vividly realised that the little 
creature was charming, that she was lovely. The tights 
moulded her slim limbs, and the shell, cut very low, 
leaving her arms and mobile breast bare, revealed by 
suggesting more than it hid. And, curiously enough, she 
was gentle. 

“ Must go,” she murmured. Her hand was still on my 
arm. “ Frenchy mustn’t be sulky. Baby frightened.” 
Four years streamed away as I remembered those words, 
spoken before our first kiss. Was there magic in them? 
Perhaps, for Maud laughed, threw a glance towards the 
doorkeeper’s back and the whispering couple, then coiled 
a warm, bare arm round my neck and, drawing my head 
down, kissed me swiftly but so violently that the scent 
and taste of the grease paint still clung to my lips when I 
woke up next day. 

“ Ta-ta. Be good,” she said, and ran up the stairs. 

I went out, stood in the drizzle, and observed, im- 
personally, that the others still waited, that two flashy, 
Jewish-looking men had joined their group, that a motor- 
car stood at the end of the alley in readiness for the star. 
As I walked away I pondered a good many questions, 
notably, did she love me? Did I love her? I think in 


330 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


both cases I answered “ No.” She had melted to me, as 
she had done a score of times before. And I.^ I could 
not tell, for one may love and despise; but I knew that 
I could not drive her image from me, her fierce, aggressive 
beauty, and the fumous intoxication of her. Soon, too, 
I was to know myself a little better. Maud did not at 
once melt to me again ; when, next day, we lunched at 
the stately Great Eastern Hotel, she said that she didn’t 
know why she had kissed me, and that after she’d done it 
I looked as if I were going to have a fit on the mat. Her 
hard surface had formed once more. 

She was still hard over a week later, on Sunday night, 
when we dined at the Trocadero, anxious only to point out 
the well-known of her world, to catch and return smiles and 
nods, to talk loudly to me so as to show that she had a 
man. And hard again, when she took me with her to the 
Fleur de Lis Club in a small street off Shaftesbury Avenue, 
into which we were passed by the Honourable John, who 
was there with Serena, slowly drinking himself into stupe- 
faction. We formed a little party, to which were added 
Sterry, a great success in the red nose and broken umbrella 
line, and Rhoda Delamare, the immensely long, fair and 
languid girl who stood against the target into which 
Signor Viccini pitched his unerring knives. The Fleur 
de Lis was almost exclusively a drinking club, though per- 
functory dancing and singing sometimes took place on the 
little stage; as but few members were allowed to pass into 
the room marked “ Private ” I suspect there was also a 
little gambling, faro or chemin de fer, but as the place 
has not, so faf, been raided I cannot be sure. Mostly 
people sat in large parties of ten and twelve; newcomers 
were at once absorbed, or discovered without difficulty that 
another solitary man or woman was an old friend. 

As we sat down at Helbert’s table we became isolated, 
for Sterry had nothing to say to us; leaning against 
Rhoda’s thin, white shoulder he spoke to her in the low. 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


331 


throaty tones that were worth a hundred a week. Serena 
had few words for us. She smiled and said: 

“Gee, you’re some style in that gown, Mordedee; I 
wouldn’t be seen with her ’cept in a tuxedo, Mr. 
CaDOR'ess.” 

The Honourable John gave me a fishy look, and weakly 
ordered the waiter to give me a whisky and soda and to 
bring him another. 

“ Listen right here. Jack,” said Serena, seizing his arm, 
“ this show don’t go on. You’ve had four now, and I’m 
not stayin’ here for you to get a bun on. See.^ That’s 
all there is to it.” 

“ Waiter, another whisky and soda,” said the Honour- 
able John, ponderously. “ I’m all right, Serrie.” 

“ I’ve a hunch you ain’t,” said Serena. “ Waiter, you’re 
the cutest thing, you’ll bring the gentleman ginger ale.” 

And, strangely enough, the Honourable John accepted 
the ginger ale, and disconsolately sipped it in spite of the 
party’s delighted chaff. Serena held him, played with 
him; I think he liked to be bullied by her, to find himself 
first encouraged to stroke her thin, dark arm while he 
told her a story she voted “ cunnin’,” and then suddenly 
to be repulsed, fiercely told to “ put a lid on ” and assured 
he was wrong if he thought he was the goods. 

Meanwhile Maud picked out for me the celebrities of 
the Fleur de Lis: Walstein, owner of Walstein’s Royal 
Halls, and Puresco, the Roumanian conductor, whose 
friendship with a middle-aged duchess was by now too 
stale to be worth discussing in detail. “ That’s Hopp,” 
she said, pointing to a monstrously fat - man, who sat 
between two shrimps out of some ballet, “ and there’s 
Sara Mallik; she used to do a Sheeny turn with Sam 
Davis, down Mile End way. Now she’s rolling. That’s 
her man there, just come in, Bobby Mornington, Lord 
Mornington’s son. D’you know what he said the first 
time he saw Sara.^ He looked her in the eye for about a 
minute and said: 


332 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ ‘ My name is Bobby Mornington, 

So, Sara, hurry up, 

For when 1 grow Lord Mornington, 

Your little game is up.’ 

Not bad, eh? She was on him . . . like a bird.” 

All the evening, and it was nearly two before we thought 
of leaving, Maud gave me the biographies of the members, 
the history of their alliances and appearances in the divorce 
court, also an inventory of the women’s jewels. I had, 
mixed with disgust, an extraordinary sense of ease as I 
surveyed these people, English and foreign, equal, careless, 
more or less disreputable; this queer cosmos inside the 
cosmos, where the peerage and the wealth of management 
drank, jostled and grossly flirted with the chorus and the 
aged but skittish stars. One had to shout to be heard, 
for forty people were all talking together; ah, what an 
easy world, for the quality of the speech didn’t matter; 
if one shouted one was heard. And we could do what 
we liked. Sterry had drawn upon his knees the careless 
Rhoda Delamare, and was telling her in a loud voice a 
story he could not have told on the stage. Helbert, who 
had outwitted his keeper and was intoxicated, was laugh- 
ing the feeble, childish laughter of the sot as Serena, cool 
and hard, but pleased because he had promised her a 
ruby ring, described for his private information a new 
“ vordervil turn ” with which she was next day going to 
Bedford Street. Maud, too, had ceded to the ambient 
looseness, lay back in the crook of my arm and let me kiss 
her soft neck, merely remarking at intervals : “ Stop yer 
ticklin’, Jock.” But as I held her I was pleading with 
her ; softened by the ease of the atmosphere, all my English 
chivalries and purities had slipped away from me. I was 
like Maud, I didn’t care. 

“ Maud, my darling,” I murmured. I tried to tell her 
that I wanted her, that I had always loved her and still 
loved her. 

” Tell me another,” she said, lazily. But still she let 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


3S3 


me caress her, carried away by the power of the place, 
half aphrodisiac, half drunken. Round us the scene was 
orgiastic. Helbert, giggling and hiccuping, was trying to 
force champagne on Serena, who played on him the trick 
of seizing Rhoda round the neck and guiding the drunken 
man’s hand toward the other girl’s mouth. Rhoda swal- 
lowed the champagne as if she were too lazy to resist, 
while Helbert glared at the girls and remarked at intervals : 
“ Funny thing, Serrie . . . you got two heads . . . ver* 
funny . . . mus’ have had too much.” Sterry laughed so 
uproariously over this joke that his face had become purple. 
I, too, had had too much to drink for my weak Southern 
stomach, and it was in a mist I saw Hopp with the two 
ballet-shrimps on his knees, and an enormous crowd, thou- 
sands of people, men in tweeds and evening clothes, and 
women in red, green, purple low-cut gowns . . . and 
smoke, torrents of tobacco smoke. 

I gripped Maud by the wrist. “ Let’s go,” I said, 
thickly. 

She obeyed, carelessly, as if her brain were soddened 
with alcohol and tobacco. In the cab, against the windows 
of which the rain spattered and flowed in silvery sheets, 
I clasped her to me, desperately, hungrily, and she did 
not reply to my rhapsodies, to the heady, broken phrases 
that came to me; but she did not resist me, and at times 
laughed. I remembered the high ring of her laughter, the 
“ Who cares ? ” of her . . . and the beating of the rain 
on my face as I stood on the doorstep at Harewood 
Avenue . . . the black void of the hall . . . and then, in 
a dream, the harsh seduction of the voice as she said: 

“ Come in, then, you silly kid.” 


IV 

Riot! Nobody cared. Not Serena, the immaculate, the 
juggler, the mysterious one who could touch pitch and 


334 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


not be defiled; nor Helbert, vapid when he was not drunk; 
nor those others, the Sterrys, the Hopps, the Rhodas, 
accomplices and partisans of mine; nor Maud; nor I. 
Serena stood as the perpetual goddess of “Who Cares?” 
or, as she put it, of “ Don’t give a damn.” Fierce and 
pure, she had the art of giving nothing for everything, 
of tempting and exploiting the Helberts of her world, 
and preserving, in the midst of its foulness, the pride of 
her own purity. Serena could not fall, for her insolence 
held her up, served her as dignity; the strangeness of her 
beauty allowed her to draw behind her an unending trail 
of lolloping men-rabbits, for there were no weaknesses 
in her mind, no little windows through which a man might 
reach at her heart. Serena was on the make; trained to 
look upon man as a purveyor of candies, novels, ice-cream 
and flowers, she gave nothing because she had nothing 
to give. No man touched her because, in her sexlessness, 
she wanted no man to touch her; when she condescended 
to let Helbert take her hand, if he tried to kiss her she 
eluded him, thrust her hair straight at his face; to court 
Serena was like making love to a hedgehog. 

So Serena watched unmoved the progress of our affairs, 
had no word of approval or condemnation when she found 
me with Maud at hours evidently ill-timed for formal calls. 
Serena had no views on morals; she tolerated everything 
that did not affect her evilly, nothing that did. In her 
view Maud was my bestest girl, and that’s all there was 
to it. 

In Maud I found a peculiar sweetness, wayward moods 
when she would suddenly seize my head with both hands, 
and feverishly caress me, and then repulse me, try to 
strike me, while the whole vocabulary of the streets flowed 
up to her lovely lips. And I loved my shame, shouted 
myself down when I asked: “Me that ’ave been wot 
I’ve been . . . what’s going to become of you? ” In Maud 
I found something that responded to my desperate mood, 
delirious moments when she actually loved me, and was 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


S35 


all a soft allure of inertia; splendid, drunken moments 
when we sang, as we danced, the ditty of the day, when 
a great, golden film hung over the world; and frightful 
moments of reaction and savagery when we quarrelled and 
found words that cut, when I shook her frail body as 
a terrier shakes a rat, and mouthed at her insults lately 
learned, when my fists clenched and my eyes became 
blurred by a terrible, seductive picture of her face when 
she screamed under my blows. . . . 

And all through, for six long weeks, it was riot. My 
day was naught but a somnolence, a round of duties carried 
out with mechanical efficiency. The hours between Maud’s 
shows alone counted, when we walked the streets, or ate 
and drank, made love and fought at street corners; and 
the hours at night clubs, and those others when we were 
half lovers, half enemies. She dragged me behind her in her 
careless course, defiant, head in the air, into public-houses, 
into the waiting-rooms of agents, on Sundays to Brighton 
and its hotels, into the scented reek of the week-end trains 
... I followed, drugged, narcotised, half-intoxicated, for 
my head was stronger now, and I knew how to drink 
without becoming drunk. ... A pantomime was taken off 
in the South of London, and there I was in the syren’s 
wake, at the supper on the stage, . . . lobster salad, I 
remember, and cold fowl, and flat beer . . . the fat chair- 
man, the personification of a grin, toasting “ the lidies, 
bless their little ’earts,” and breaking down when the 
career of Walstein’s Royals was alluded to, weeping 
drunkenly when cheers were given for ’ole Bill and ’ole 
Jim. . . . Faces float up, like a “ movie,” as Serena said 
when I told her what they looked like, a great nosegay 
of faces, bloated male faces over the wrong collars, painted, 
haggard women’s heads with yellow hair in their eyes, 
and pretty, round, baby faces with pouting lips. They 
rise in the mist of alcohol, and there rises, too, the memory 
of me, sodden and resentful, my soul still struggling with 
me as I repeated again and again, “ Me that ’ave been wot 


336 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I’ve been . . but I was too far from the past and the 
splendour of its ambition. Cast out by those others, the 
charm did not touch me. 

V 

For I hated myself in the degradation of which I was 
the more conscious as I plunged deeper. Ten weeks, and 
the slough up to my neck. March, green buds pricking 
their sharp points into the freshness of spring, but dull 
pains in my head and bones, spots before my eyes, liver 
blotches upon my cheek. The round of drink and dull 
orgy amid the coming of spring. Maud held to my lips 
no cup of elixir: the draught was either fiery or dulling, 
as suited her fancy, but never rich in hope or life. We 
lived for the day and by it. For a month she was out of 
a shop, as her next engagement, at a North London hall, 
did not coincide with the end of the current one, and 
during that month I seemed to saturate myself with the 
emanation of her gay, base and harsh personality. She 
found in me, the new me, exactly what she wanted, a 
shrill, cheerful despair; she liked me when I broke into 
the oaths she had taught me, admired me when I found 
tales to tell that made even Sterry uneasy, loved me when, 
of nights, at the Fleur de Lis, with my dank, black hair 
plastered over my wild eyes, I could sneer at the holinesses. 

“ Cheer up, we’ll soon be dead.” 

So said all of us. And I didn’t care who knew. Sunken 
in my passion, I wanted everybody to know I was en- 
thralled; I boasted of Maud at Barbezan’s, showed her 
photograph to the clerks, so that they might reprove me 
and envy me and despise me, and yet be subtly drawn to 
ask me questions. I made her come to the City to lunch, 
bringing Serena, who always went where somebody else 
paid. And one night, as we came out of the theatre, 
where I had taken Maud on pay-day, in the crowd under 
the veranda I laughed because there rested upon me the 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


S37 


eyes of a theatre-party, Colonel and Mrs. Raleigh, Mrs. 
Lawton and Muriel. They would tell Edith. Well, let 
them tell in their superiority. I openly took Maud’s arm 
and drew her against me; I smiled, I strutted, and though 
an incomprehensible pain shot through me as I thought 
of Edith, I bent down with my face close to Maud’s heavy 
curls. 

Let them tell it in the houses of superior England, for 
I had found England out. I knew those English; they 
were not a nation, but a caste, and I no longer wanted to 
enter it: Brahmins of the West who would not have me 
save as a pariah, I’d not try to be aught to you. English 
who despise Europe, whom mistaken Europe envies, I’d 
have the luxury of despising you. I knew what your 
virtues were: English virtues were not virtues but voids; 
instead of fine, ruddy vices the English had nothing. Their 
tolerance was indifference; their fairness was convention; 
their calm was coldness, their aloofness, stupidity. I drew 
Maud closer, crushing her to me. 

“ You French devil,” she said. But now I minded no 
adjectives. The acidity of our love-making served me 
well enough, even when Maud refused herself to sweet- 
nesses for which my buried self sometimes clamoured. She 
was hard. If I wanted to take her home after dinner, to 
sit with her for long hours, and to hold her hand, uncon- 
sciously to seek quietude, she did not: she wanted to go 
to a music-hall. Always Maud had to be active, to laugh, 
weep, clap or hiss, to see plays and turns, to drink, to 
smoke and to talk. In April I took her up the river, 
but she tired of Shepperton in an hour. 

“ One-eyed sort of place,” she said, let’s go to 
Skindles.” 

And it had to be Skindles, Maidenhead, Boulter’s, the 
sunny, crowded lock and the transferred blare of the 
town. Maud could not dine save among a hundred others, 
take her pleasure save with others, talk except against 
a restaurant band; hostile to the community, she needed 


338 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


it, was held by it, as if her envies and her hatreds linked 
her with her fellows more closely than would have her 
loves. 

I was like her, wanted so to be, for now I carried my 
insolence, and now the inevitable crisis was coming. I 
had become a hero at Barbezan’s, a person to whom 
juniors came timidly to tell tales, before whom they stood 
as might village beaux before Don Juan. Not a word 
had been said by Hugh or Mr. Lawton, for no fault had 
been found with me ... or I had been tacitly excused 
because of the things that had happened. They were not 
going to be unfair to me, I think, and for that reason were 
ready to be unfairly lenient. They knew in what at- 
mosphere I lived, for I cannot believe that Farr, my 
enemy, and the others, my envious friends, omitted to 
enlighten them. But nothing was said, and I hated them 
the more for their tolerance. “ Damn your tolerance,” I 
thought, much in the spirit of the proud beggar who 
says: “Curse your charity.” Their tolerance jangled my 
nerves. 

One morning I went into Hugh’s room. He looked up 
at me, faintly smiling, and for one second I was stirred 
by the sight of him, young, beautiful and so emphatically 
clean. I suddenly felt an impulse to pour out my flood 
of pain and desire before this creature, so splendid and 
akin in its motionlessness to a statue of Apollo. But, as 
suddenly, I hardened, and rage filled my soul, for I was 
swift to take offence now, and I had found insult, subtle, 
biting insult: Hugh had sniffed. 

“What are you sniffing at?” I asked, angrily. 

Hugh looked at me with a very little surprise in his 
quiet eyes. 

“ I suppose you smell scent,” I said. “ Well, you do 
. . . and you know where it comes from. It’s not I who 
use scent, it’s the company I keep . . . it’s Maudie D., 
Maudie Devon. You know how I stand with her, don’t 
you? ” 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


339 


“ It’s no business of mine ” Hugh began. 

“ No business of yours ! ” I shouted. “ Ah, here it is 
again, your damned tolerance, your damned liberalism 
. . . you don’t care, you don’t condescend to care, like 
the rest of the English. A man may go to the dogs, I 
suppose, if the dogs don’t live in your kennel. You’re not 
going to interfere, to help a man ” 

“ Anything I can do ” said Hugh. 

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” I snarled, 
though I knew that I ached for somebody who would 
do something; “ I won’t have your condescending help. 
You couldn’t give it if you wanted to, for England’s heart 
is in cold storage. You’ve got no hearts, no feelings, no 
enthusiasm: where the French keep their passions, you 
keep a slide-rule. I don’t want help, I don’t want sym- 
pathy. I just want you to respect my personality, I want 
to be recognised as a man.” 

“ I’m sure I recognise all that,” said Hugh. 

“You don’t. In France we value a man for being a 
fine man; in England you value him for being an English- 
man. Oh, I know what that sniff means. You smell scent, 
you suggest I use scent, that I’m effeminate, disreputable 
— foreign. Why don’t you tell me that I’m on a level 
with the barber, the waiter, the musician in the band.^ with 
the rest of the dirty foreigners as you call them, when 
you don’t use a stronger adjective. Why can’t you be 
frank about it.^ why can’t you massacre the giaour, like 
the Turk.^ or torture him as the Chinese do the foreign 
devils ? Tolerant Englishmen, you’re only barbarians, 
xenophobes ” 

“ You do use long words,” said Hugh, lazily, as he 
inspected his finger-nails. “ What do you mean by xeno 
. . . what’s its name ? ” 

Then I lost my temper. The original little insult of 
the sniff receded, and it was indicative of my state of 
mind that such a trifle should raise such a storm — unless 
it be always the trifles that matter. I told Hugh what 


340 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I thought of him, his fashion-plate clothes, his superior 
Pall Mall club, his futile, brain-wasting golf, his liking 
for musical comedy, his sham Liberalism, his stupid satis- 
faction with the material world, his suspicion of art and 
letters, his dull, smug public-school standard. As I ranted, 

I hated him, and I hated myself because a devil in me 
made me shout and gesticulate, because I was a French- 
man, because like Kipling’s big beasts, he wasn’t going 
to notice the monkey. And I ranted on when Mr. Lawton 
came in from the next room to see what was the matter. 

I turned on him, charged him with being as his son, with 
having conspired with England to make his son like him, 
like his father, like his father’s friends, so that all of 
them, caste, class and nation, they might sneer at different 
men. 

“ I hate your society of convention and artifice, I hate 
the boat-race, the meet of the Four-in-Hand Club, tl)e 
Cup-Tie Final, the Academy. I hate your bourgeois 
dinners, your salmon, your saddle of mutton and your 
port. I hate your big police and your stupid life-guards- 
men — we’d have made short work of them, my regiment. 

I hate your paid soldiers and your slavish worship of 
aristocrats and monarchs. I hate your sham fair play, 
which is only a habit. I hate everything that’s English, 
and I’m going to leave it; I’m sick of it, sick of you, sick 
of your stupid, romantic women and your dumb, bloodless 
men; I’m sick of you all, sick of all you think and like, 
and I’m going back to France, going now, going at 
once ” 

They looked at me with calm, faintly surprised faces. 

“ Can’t you speak ? ” I shouted ; “ can’t you defend your 
country and yourselves? No,” I said bitterly, “ I suppose • 
you don’t condescend to say what you think, or perhaps, 
you can’t because you’ve never learned to. Well, I’m 
going now.” 

I turned as I opened the door and said: 

I give you no notice ; you can keep my month’s salary. 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


S41 


You can have the money: nation of shopkeepers, you 
understand that.” 

Then I slammed the door. 


VI 

Half-an-hour later I was at Harewood Avenue. Maud 
was still in bed. She was awake, though, and reading 
a halfpenny picture paper; on the little table by her 
bedside stood the remains of her breakfast, the skin of 
a kipper of which the whole room reeked. But her brown 
hair, tumbled upon the pillow, proved that it curled 
naturally, and her skin, devoid of rouge or powder, glowed 
white and warm pink, like the most delicate peony. I 
flung myself down on my knees, snatched one of her hands. 

“ Hullo ! what’s this blown in ? ” she asked. 

“ Maud, my darling,” I said, fervently, “ I’m going to 
take you away with me.” 

“ Oh, my godfather ! You’re going to take me away, 
I don’t think.” 

“ I am, I’m going to marry you.” 

“Well! things were cheap! But tell us some more; 
let’s hear all about this rush o’ brains at eleven in the 
morning. Has your long-lost uncle come back from Amer- 
ica, or what? ” 

“ Maud,” I said, solemn now, “ you don’t understand. 
I’ve had enough of this country, I’ve had enough of those 
people. I want to go back to France, where there is 
sunshine and flowers and wine. I want to go back because 
the people there say what they think, and mean what they 
say, where it’s all simple and easy because people don’t 
judge you by what you pretend to be, but by what you 
are. I want to go back, and I want you to marry me 
and come with me, because you’re the only woman in 
England who has understood me, who has been kind to 
me. I want you because I love you — and you, my little 


342 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Maud, you love me, you do love me? Don’t you, darling? 
It’s been the real thing, hasn’t it, all these months?” 

Maud looked at me with distended eyes which showed 
that she did not in the least understand me. Her hand 
struggled in mine, for I was crushing her rings into her 
fingers. “ Ouch, yer hurtin’,” she said, and continued 
to stare at me. While I went on to explain that I had 
left Barbezan, that I was going home, that I would take 
her to Bordeaux, or rather to Paris, and make a good 
life for her there, I knew that I was struggling for her 
sake, too, trying to overcome some meanness in her, be- 
cause she was the least mean of those English. I was 
clinging to her, pitifully, because she had loved me in her 
fashion, and because I could not face the idea of going 
back lonely to a place where I would be alone, I filled 
my greedy eyes with her beauty, tried to believe that I 
loved her, and that she loved me, for it was necessary we 
should love; if I had to go alone I thought I would commit 
suicide. 

“Well, I never!” she said again. Then, mechanically: 
“ Do it again, Ikey, I saw di’monds ! ” 

I restated my case, and Maud took it in. She freed her 
hand, sat up, ravelled her curls and looked at me with an 
air of pity. 

“ You are a cough-drop,” she said. “ Why, you must 
be barmy, chucking up a good job like that, and I’m 
blowed if I know why. Oh, yes, you needn’t go over it 
again, you’ve been chewing the rag long enough. I take 
it you’re going home on spec., that you haven’t got a 
job over there? No, of course not — and you come along 
and ask me to marry you when you may be on your uppers 
next month! Well, ’ere’s me love to you, and it ain’t a 
business proposition, as old Serrie says.” 

“Do you mean that you won’t marry me?” I asked, 
incredulously. 

“ Oh, sit on a tack,” said Maud. 

“ But I love you,” I said, with pathetic obstinacy. 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


S4>3 


“ Everybody loves me . . . nearly/’ sang Maud. Then, 
seriously: ‘ Look here, you old tea-caddy. You’ve backed 
a wrong ’un if you think I’m going to throw in my little 
all with you, and walk out with you ‘ ’and-in-’and into 
the crool ard world. I didn t ask you to marry me when 
I took up with you? No fear, I knew what I was up to; 
s’pose I was gone on you, and then you were ready to 
give me a good time, but marry you — ’tain’t so likely. I’m 
not going to marry anybody. Oh, yes, I know, you say 
you’re going to get on, and all that, but that’s Your 
version of the part. Take it from me: I shan’t marry 
you, and if you don’t like that you can hop it.” 

I did not take up the challenge flung down by her 
cynical brutality; I knew now what I had only suspected, 
that Maud had never loved me, that she had slid into my 
arms as she would have into those of any man who could 
give her a good time. She was not as sexless as Serena, 
but so undiscriminating, so light as not to care what man 
she favoured. Lightness! oh, yes, I had met it before. 
A man can choose among English girls: heavy as lead or 
light as air. But I was too broken to fight; all I wanted 
was to crawl into the sheltering arms that had not always 
been unkind. So I took up, faltering, the tale of my 
love. 

“ Oh,” cried Maud, at last, “ you give me the fair sick.” 
She glared at me, and suddenly the flood of truth rushed 
from her lips. I understood that she had played with me 
for her own pleasure, exploited me and flattered me to 
keep me in a good temper, that she had never loved me, 
looked upon me as aught save a diversion, that she didn’t 
want me, indeed, that she wanted to be rid of me, that she 
was glad I was going, and the sooner the better. 

“ Serrie, Serrie,” she screamed, “ come in and have a 
look at this nutty prawn. Serrie, Serrie ! ” 

Serena came in from the next room, severe and beautiful 
in black. In a few sentences, broken by spasms of laugh- 
ter, Maud explained the position. 


344 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ It ain’t a business proposition, Mr. CaDORess,” said 
Serena. 

“What did I say!” cried Maud, triumphantly; “ mar- 
velooze ! ” 

“ Say, honey,” Serena remarked to me, “ you’re a four- 
flusher, ain’t you.^ You’ve got no money an’ you’ve got 
no job, an’ you want to marry Mordedee. That’s getting 
down to brass tacks, ain’t it? Wal, I figure out she can 
please herself, but if she says she won’t that ain’t enough 
to start you walking.” 

“ What d’you take me for ? ” asked Maud, angrily. 
“Think I’m going to be your skivvy? or d’you want 
me to keep you? I’m not so stuck on your face as all 
that ” 

Each in turn the girls shot their arrows at me. First 
it was Serena, languid and polite, conveying to me in 
that most concentrated form, American sarcasm, that, 
equally with Maud, she had no more use for me now that 
I was not likely to be able to give any girl a good time. 
Then it was Maud, more direct, spatterdashing her speech 
with disjointed music-hall Cockneyisms, invigorating it 
with adjectives. While Serena leant against the wall in 
an attitude which suggested that she would have put her 
hands in her pockets if she had had any, Maud leant 
forward, resting on her beautiful bare arms, her brown 
curls tumbled about her face, her shapely lips spitting 
insult at me. The American flicked me with a whip, the 
English girl used a bludgeon. In collaboration they painted 
the picture postcard versions of love and marriage. A man 
drinking too much beer, a wife sitting with a poker in 
front of a clock set at three a.m., twins howling in the 
night, a flirtation with the lodger: marriage. A dandy girl 
(according to Serena, a “ Fluffy Ruffles ”) sitting at a little 
table before a bottle of champagne, a man “ detained by 
pressing business,” with a typist on his knees, six feet of 
femininity, firelit, “ thinking of you,” and a couple falling 
into acquaintanceship on the rink: love . . . 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


345 


“ No, I’m not taking any,” Maud panted, “ not if they 
make you a bloomin’ Duke. So ” — she broke off and sang: 

— so, good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you ” 

“ Say, honey,” Serena began again, sweetly, “ you’ve 
got to take your medicine. I’m just crazed about you 
myself, but it’s dollars to doughnuts we couldn’t get fixed 
without you had the ooftish, as me friend Mordedee says. 

You better slope, for there’s nothin’ doin’ here ” 

“That’s right, Serrie,” Maud shouted. Then to me: 
“ Get out. Hook it. I’m fed up with you, fed up with 
your beastly French ways and your high and mighty 

French talk. Hook it, I say, hook it, or ” 

A red flood rose to her cheeks. Her trembling hand 
fumbled at the plate, seized the knife. For two or three 
seconds we looked at each other tensely. But she did 
not throw the knife. I turned, very weak and too numb 
to suffer. I left the room and walked downstairs. For 
some time I stood in the street, hatless, abstracted, and 
a butt for little Cockney boys. Now I was quite alone. 


VII 

For the next seven days, when I stayed in my sitting- 
room, among those pretty chintzes that Edith had chosen, 
I did not, could not suffer. I was driven out into the 
streets: I went to them seeking variety, society, that is 
the sight of my fellows, as I could not have their friend- 
ship. I was alone. I ate with extreme regularity at a 
restaurant in Soho where I could talk French to the 
waiters, bought French papers at the Monico, French 
cigarettes in Coventry Street. I did all this without vio- 
lence; by natural reaction I was slipping back to France; 
with a new coldness, which was only French cynicism, I 
even allowed myself to be drawn into an ugly, unemo- 
tional adventure because the unseductive, seducing voice 
addressed me in French. 


346 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


But these pale flickers of France did not warm me. I 
was uneasy, rather than suffering, and knew that my dis- 
comfort came from my loneliness. When again I began 
to wander the streets at night, seeking companionship, or 
to sit long hours in the parks, watching the children at 
play, and the business of the waterfowl, I knew that 
loneliness it was I carried upon my shoulders. Adventure 
did not call me: it had lost its thrill; I thought of drink, 
but I had drunk so much during the past three months 
that my stomach turned from the idea. One night I 
thought of drugs, but the chemists refused me laudanum, 
cocaine and veronal: I was not clever enough to go to a 
doctor and complain of insomnia, and thought myself in- 
spired when I decided to have an orgy on tobacco, to 
smoke a hundred cigarettes before I went to sleep. 

I did not do that, but my loneliness appears to me 
to-day when I remember what I did: with a crafty smile 
I decided to buy my cigarettes at ten different shops in 
packets of ten, so that I might talk with ten men. 

But the end of that period is marked by something 
else, by an uncanny clarity of mind. Now that I was 
idle, had hours in which to think, and no woman to occupy 
my mind, I saw the English even more distinctly than 
I had done in my earlier fury. I saw them dispassion- 
ately, which does not mean I did not hate them, but I 
hated them calmly, as a judge may hate an atrocious 
criminal whom it is his duty to hang in proper legal form. 
The deathly London Sunday lay heavy on me now, for 
no houses were open to me, and the streets, wet or sunny, 
repelled me because they led me nowhere. I found the 
Sabbath out, dissected it into its simple components: con- 
ventional worship. Church Parade, roast beef, sleep, a 
large tea, nothing, cold supper, nothing, then sleep. For 
the impious, a little bridge. No billiards anywhere. Public 
houses open long enough for the nation to get drunk. Also 
sacred concerts and more love-making than usual. 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS S4>7 

Drink hung heavy over England. I saw that the rich 
drink to kill time, the poor to kill care. 

I thought of politics, and suddenly remembered Gobot. 
Heavens! how many years ago that was! when I thought 
the English so fine. I could see Gobot’s fat, red face, 
hear his loud voice as he shouted: “Who stole Canada? 
the English. Did the English help Poland? Did the 
English help the Balkan Christians, or did they give them 
to the Turk? Did not the English fight China to maintain 

the opium traffic? Hypocrites, liars, Bible-mongers ” 

Good old Gobot, you were not a fool. 

I thought of the splendid figure of John Bull, of whom 
I had been so fond at Hambury. He appeared in a 
different guise: John Bull became a dull, offensive brute; 
I disliked the aggressive bridge of his high nose, the coarse 
paunch under his red waistcoat, his hairy hands, his 
top-boots, and his general air of lumbering health. I felt 
that no idea would ever get into that thick skull, though 
there was certainly room enough inside. The caution of 
the fellow was, I now knew, mere lack of imagination; 
John Bull was always letting the pot simmer — until the 
fire went out. I hated the grandiloquent way in which 
he addressed his colonies, the ostentation with which he 
treated them to an army and navy. Imperialism, for- 
sooth ! Rather Imperial outdoor relief. I think I hated 
him deeply because I had loved him so much. Else I could 
not have felt the ghoulish joy I found in the Dutch song 
Querido quotes in Toil of Men, the song where the peasants 
stigmatise the English concentration camps of South 
Africa : 


“ Women and children, see them lie. 

To the murder camps sent to die. 

Oh, my God, what a bitter shame! 

Come, let us spit upon England’s name! ” 


My personal rancour vanished, and this song rang in 
my ears, expelling the terrible little bit of doggerel which 


S48 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


had told me what I was. No longer was it “A Froggy 
Would a-Wooing Go ” — held me, sereamed out of the wind 
or rumbled out of the railway tracks, but this new song, 
this four-line summary of English beef-beer-and-blood-fed 
savagery. I knew what lay under the coldness and the 
polish; it was sheer, sullen brutality, unredeemed even by 
the subtlety of cruel China, the glorious, sunny ferocity 
of Spain. 

Big counts, little counts, all added to the indictment 
of this country where parks had to be closed at sunset 
to arrest the grossness of the people, where no man might 
drink in the open air because the skies were of water and 
soot, where no flowers grew, where no fruit matured, as 
though the hateful coldness of the islands were such that 
even trees and shrubs acquired nationality. English daf- 
fodils, and English lilac, you bloomed in vain that April, 
for I knew the first to be Dutch, the second to be French. 
And English women, you flaunted in vain in the fresh, 
salt wind, the cream and roses of your cheeks; I saw your 
cheeks no more, your red, smiling lips that had smiled 
upon me with such tolerance; I saw only your unloveliness, 
your cheap beads, your machine-made lace, your soiled 
white gloves, your ill-cut stays, and the tragic draggling 
over your boots of the torn, muddy edges of your petticoats. 

I was going home. In vain Stanley had come to me 
with a startling piece of news. I had seen very little 
of him during the last five months of misery and orgy; 
instinctively I had shrunk from his inquisitive eyes, 
knowing that he would soon discover my secrets, drag 
into his mental limelight the story of my love and its 
wilting, force me to see as it was my following shame. 
I had not been back to the little house to hear the round 
wife call him affectionate, abusive names. Now and then 
we had played chess, and I had resisted scrutiny by 
feigning a new absorption in the game; I must have de- 
ceived him, on the whole, for I did attain such absorption 
as to beat him now and then by moves which he did not 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


349 


think me capable of, but I discovered suddenly that I had 
not deceived him throughout. He arrived at Cambridge 
Street early one Sunday morning, when I still lay in bed. 
I would have refused to see him if the landlady had not 
shown him straight into the sitting-room. He came in 
and sat down near my bed. 

“In bed at eleven.^” he said, cheerfully. “Had an- 
other thick night ” 

“ I don’t have thick nights,” I said, emphasising my 
actual sulkiness. 

“ Oh, you’ve reformed then } I thought you would.” 

I threw him an interrogative look, and, as I met the 
unflinching, grey eyes, knew that he knew, wondered 
whether he knew every detail. I pressed my cheek into 
the pillow and let out a faint sound. 

“ Cheer up,” said Stanley, gravely. “ Cheer up. It’s 
never too late to mend, old chap. I know all about it. 
Oh, yes, more than you think.” 

“ I don’t care,” I said. “ I’m going back to France.” 

“ Are you Well Anyhow — listen to me first. I’m 

not going to talk about your affairs — it’s none of my ” 

“ Don’t say it, don’t say it,” I screamed, as I started 
up; not his business — no Englishman’s business — their 
phrase — I couldn’t bear it. Then a heavy blanket of 
indifference smothered me. “ Go on,” I said. 

“ I won’t say it,” Stanley went on, as he mistook my 
meaning. “ Let’s bury it. You had a hard time and you 
went on the bust. No one can blame you, but it’s all over, 
and you want to begin again. Don’t shake your head: 
you do. If you didn’t you’d have drowned yourself.” 

“ I pretty nearly did.” 

“ But you just didn’t. That old fool Schopenhauer 
would tell you that you didn’t because you still saw some- 
thing in life; still, never mind Schopenhauer. What I 
want to say’s just this: I’m leaving the C. and P. end 
June, because I want to set up for myself; I’m thinking 
of doing some shipbroking and chartering, same as Bar- 


350 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


bezan. I’ve saved a bit of money these ten years^ enough 
to start the thing properly and run it for a year or so, 
and I’ve got a few pals who’ll enable me to pay expenses 
if they give me all the work they promise. Now will you 
come in as my partner? You’ll get a good share, bar the 
capital interest, of course.” 

I looked at him curiously, wondering why the oppor- 
tunity did not thrill me, but it did not. 

“ I’m going back to France,” I said. 

Stanley stuck to his point, said frankly that he thought 
I had push and that the sort of bounce I had tried on 
him would often come off. He gave a still better reason 
for wanting my help — namely, that the word Cadoresse 
still counted in the Port, and that he had an idea it might 
count in Bordeaux too; I was to have all the French busi- 
ness, and wasn’t that as good as going home? 

“ I’m going back to France,” I said. I made no effort 
to tell him I was broken and spiritless, that I wanted 
only to shake free from England. I was too broken to 
explain. In vain did he re-state his scheme, break through 
his English reserve and try to make me see that my 
wounds might be healed, assure me again that it was not 
too late to mend. 

“ It’s too late,” I said. “ I’m going back to France.** 

“ Well/’ he said at last, after an hour had elapsed, “ I 
shan’t start for two months, and I shan’t ask anybody 
else. If you think better of it . . 

I shook my head. 


VIII 

The English Channel — oh, no, not that, but “ La 
Manche.” The Dieppe cliffs and, behold, a lesser green- 
ness above them than in the land of everlasting rains; 
the billowy fields of Normandy that dried into still paler 
green as we entered the He de France. Ah, it was good, 
Paris, the clatter of the carts and cabs on the cobbles, the 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


351 


queer oaty ” smell, but it was better the next day when 
the rapide hurled itself towards the South. For here were 
Orleans and Tours, and now Poitiers — here were soldiers 
wearing my old uniform, and there went a postman in a 
linen blouse — of course, it was hot; this was not the weak 
English May, it was French May, like an English July. 
Faster, faster towards the South, Angouleme and the 
cathedral on the hill, and Coutras, red and white, sun- 
glowing Coutras — and suddenly the blue, burnished blaze 
of the Gironde waters — Bordeaux, my town, the good 
sweat on my North-paled brow, the good, heavy sun. 


IX 

I had a fortnight of happiness. Frigidly received by 
my mother, who considered that I had disgraced her as 
well as myself by leaving “ the house,” after proposing 
without her consent to a girl who had no dowry, I found 
that I was English enough not to mind very much whether 
she disapproved of my behaviour. Besides, we settled our 
relations on the morning which followed my arrival. We 
stood in the drawing-room, which had changed in no 
particular in five years, I against the black mantelpiece, 
my mother near the Empire couch, her hand upon a garnet 
cushion, and as she spoke her mild-severe speech I saw 
that she had not changed either, that no streaks of grey 
appeared in her tight black hair; I guessed that in five 
years her point of view had not altered, that it never 
would alter. She spoke of her disappointment, blamed me 
for not asking her leave before I left London, informed 
me that I had wrecked my life, inquired by what right 
I did what I chose. I think I would have answered in 
the hot, disrespectful English way, but I caught myself 
analysing my mother, wondering whether, in the chest of 
drawers, there still were the little high-heeled shoes, once 
too large for me, near the black silk dress of the great 


352 


THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


days. What was the use of quarrelling with the living 
past.^ It was about me, the full breadth of it — for did 
not the room still exhale the strange, familiar smell of 
decay? The smell sickened me now; I went to the win- 
dow, threw it open and was rebuked. But my mother 
became more precise, wanted to know my intentions. 

“ At present, none,” I replied, curtly. “ Later on I 
will look for a position here. I shall not cost you any- 
thing; I will pay you a hundred and fifty francs a 
month ” 

“ I did not ask for money,” said my mother, crossing 
her small hands on her black frock. 

“ I have some. I have saved about two thousand 
francs.” 

My mother did not reply for some time, but she was 
impressed, for eighty pounds is a large sum in the South, 
and she liked my having been thrifty. What would she 
have said if I had told her how much more it might have 
been if Maud and I had not sometimes spent ten pounds 
in a day and night? 

** Very well,” said my mother, “ since you can afford 
it . . .” She was plainly relieved to see that the prodigal 
son had brought home a calf. Then she requested me to 
be secretive as to my affairs, which should be described 
as healthy, so that I might not injure Jeanne. 

“ We have had difficulties, great difficulties,” she said. 
“ Mademoiselle is not easy to please, and she has only 
fifty thousand francs. It is not as if she were very 
pretty, and she has ideas — excentriques/^ 

I pitied my little sister: it is hard in France when you 
are excentrique. 

** She has had some good opportunities, and she has not 
taken them. There was Monsieur Vachol, the engineer; 
of course he had an old affaire^ but that could have been 
arrange. And Monsieur Corzieux, you remember his son 
at school ” 

“ Old Corzieux must be fifty,” I remarked. 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


353 


" Oui, out — stilly he was very fond of her.” My mother 
sighed. “ She is twenty-three. We must see, we must 
really see . . .” 

Something displeased me in the interview; the drawing- 
room in which was no comfortable seat, the formality 
of it all. But outside was pure joy; I could look out of 
the dining-room window and see the street that led to the 
Quinconces, the sun gleaming on the white tables of the 
cafe at the corner. And I liked to hear Jeanne, in the 
drawing-room, practising Chopin, Mozart, occasionally 
breaking out into Lalo-or Faure. Jeanne gave me nothing; 
we had never had much in common and, as soon as she 
found that I would not tell her anything about “ low life 
in London,” of which she had made a mental picture from 
Les My sieves de Londres, she joined my mother against 
me. What her wild ideas were I never found out; I 
suppose the ideas of English girls were so unmaidenly 
that I had lost my sense of wildness. Jeanne went alone 
once a week to a course of French literature at the Faculte. 
It may have been that; I had to drag myself back to the 
view that young girls should not go all on their lonesome, 
as Maud would have said. 

No, the joy of that first fortnight was outside the house. 
There was the sun ever and fiercely glowing; the black 
shadows with the purplish penumbra lay across the white 
blaze of the paths when I went into the park to see the 
magnolia. It was just blooming, and its flowers were 
small; not one was yet as large as the big, fleshy creature 
upon which I had pressed the kiss of a lover. “ Wait,” 
said the magnolia. “ This is your city and your sky ; wait 
and I will bloom, arouse your old, wild passion.” 

I found some of my old friends. Lavalette had gone 
to Paris, and was now a barrister, a great success in the 
Highlif of the town. Gobot I saw only two or three 
times, for he lived some twenty miles up the river, on his 
father’s vine-clad hills; but Luzan, who worked in a bank, 
I met every day at half-past five. Together we sat under 


354> THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


the awning of the Cafe de la Regence, in front of a 
vermouth, watched the local dandies pass and smile at the 
spruce, dark work-girls with the ugl;^ faces and the splen- 
did figures. My old friends did me good, for we soon 
passed out of the “ Do you remember? ” conversation into 
a review of more actual things; I told them my story, 
colouring it up a little, shedding over myself Wertherian 
glamour (when I spoke of Edith), Byronic gloom (when 
I told the way in which the English had treated me). 
And I made up as Don Juan when it came to Maud. 

Gobot was kind; he was stouter and redder than ever; 
he was married, had one child, intended to have two, 
to drink a good deal of claret, to sell a good deal more, 
to become maire of his commune, grow older, yet stouter, 
jollier, and to save his soul in the nick of time. Gobot, 
you’re nothing but Pantagruel; you jolly brute, I love you. 
But Luzan helped me more, for Gobot was not exactly 
the listener a broken-hearted young man wanted. When 
you are miserable you need to be made still more misera- 
ble; then you touch bottom, rebound and feel much better. 
That is where Luzan came in; he was now so cynical, 
so gay a sceptic, so devoid of illusion as to success, woman 
and salvation that it was good to tell him my story. He 
laughed, vowed that my imagination would play me the 
same old trick: that is, I would love again. He almost 
made me believe that Edith had never loved me. His talk 
seared me, cauterised me. 

Edith ... I thought of her when I was alone, when 
I looked favourably upon my bold, broad-hipped country- 
women. I swore I would love them, turned away from 
the frail ghost of the Dresden Shepherdess. I cursed the 
ghost and its gold hair, the gleam of which was in the 
sunshine. 

I won, for the sun was in my bones. I loafed along 
the wharves, smoked immensely, played billiards in the 
evening with Luzan, read a number of light novels. I did 
not look for work. I was settling down. 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


355 


X 

As I have said, the first fortnight was happiness; then 
came a fortnight of disquiet. This was so vague that I 
only realised it at the very end, decided that I wanted 
occupation, began to seek it. I did not find a post at 
once, though I should have if I had not been nonchalant, 
as my qualifications were high; but salaries were lower 
than in England, and I disliked the idea of living on a 
reduced scale; besides, I had money enough to keep me 
for a year: there was no hurry. Yet the disquiet grew, 
and I felt offended; accustomed things grated upon me: 
I looked at them again, and found them normal ; then 
they worried me again. 

I began to look for work more feverishly and found 
at once a post as foreign correspondent in a very good 
firm, at the high salary of three hundred and fifty francs 
a month. Enough to marry on, I thought, bitterly. And 
why not? I added. I began to consider the idea much as 
one may consider absolutely painless suicide. 

But I was not to commit suicide, nor was I even to 
occupy the post of foreign correspondent. I could elaborate 
the mental processes of those two months — but what for? 
It is a chronicle of the dead, or the tale of the slow setting 
of a broken limb. Rather will I say that I was bored, 
chafed, and put down the revolution to accident. The 
accident was simple. One afternoon as I came up the 
stairs, I crossed Monsieur and Madame Luzan, he in a 
frock-coat and silk hat, she in modish brown velvet. We 
smiled, exchanged comments on the weather, but I guessed 
by their clothes and Madame Luzan’s smiles that they 
had been on a solemn errand. I suspected she would have 
kissed me if we had not been on the stairs. 

I found my mother in her black silk frock, smiling and 
rather stately, Jeanne very demure and self-conscious. I 
was not surprised when informed that her hand had that 


356 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


afternoon been granted to Luzan, more exaetly that her 
fifty thousand francs had come together with a salary 
of twelve pounds a month, and a parental allowance of 
forty pounds a year. The fortunes having dovetailed, it 
had been decided that the young people should go through 
the formality of marriage. I congratulated Jeanne, kissed 
her and my mother, went to my room. The affair sickened 
me; I liked Luzan, but he had undeceived me as to his 
ideals; also I knew that he had an old affair; also that he 
had never been alone with Jeanne. Love her? absurd. 
Then I called myself a fool, an English fool. Then I 
swung back and decided to have it out with Jeanne. 

I found her calm, cynical even. 

“ I do not dislike him,” she said. “ What mor6 do you 
want? ” 

I mumbled something about love. 

“ Oh, well, that would be charmant. Still, one cannot 
have everything.” 

I went on, found she did not think it disgusting that 
she should be sold in marriage; all that she could see 
was that Luzan was much nicer than Vachol and old 
Corzieux. Marriage was a contract, and she was twenty- 
three. I looked in vain for sweetness in her small, dark 
face, her splendid black eyes ; there might be passion 
there, if those heavy eyebrows and the faint down on 
the upper lip meant anything at all, but not love. Still 
I pleaded. 

“Oh, well,” Jeanne suddenly spat out at me, “love 
played you nice tricks.” 

For some seconds I could not speak. Once, when I tried 
to learn to box, I was hit over the heart: it was like that. 
Then a cold rage seized me. 

“ It did. It will play them on you. I suppose you 
intend to marry without love — and to make up for lost 
time after.” 

We looked at each other with clenched teeth, hating 
each other. She was livid, and I suppose I was too. 


AFTER THE ENCOUNTERS 


357 


XI 

I saw the French as they were, now, for Jeanne had 
torn me out of my dreams ; I saw them, hated them. With 
English eyes I saw the big, vulgar sun, the men’s absurd, 
tight clothes, the mongrel dogs; I saw the painted, sim- 
pering, sensual, lying women; I found the French furniture 
uncomfortable, the French table appointments fit for a 
prison. I went now oppressed by the stuffiness, the closed 
windows in summer, by the sensation that these people did 
not take baths. 

I went into the park. But near the magnolia tree were 
two young men in flashy clothes. They laughed and talked 
very loud. Then one of them ran, leapt a three-foot 
railing, alighted with an air of triumph; I saw him look 
at the nursemaid he was fascinating by his nimbleness, at 
me, to see whether I was admiring him. 

Showing off! said my English mind. 

And France did not pretend she was going to take me 
back. 

Through the mouth of a cabman who stopped his horse 
in front of the little table where I moodily sipped absinthe 
and tried to drive out of my head the thought of whisky 
and soda, she shouted at me. “ Hi, Angliche ! ” cried the 
cabman, and in broken English offered to drive me round 
the town. I smiled bitterly and said nothing, while this 
Frenchman drew conclusions from my clothes and my 
silence. 

The cabman was not alone in his opinion. My mother 
quarrelled with me, because I had sniffed at Jeanne’s 
conveyance, I mean marriage. It was a mean, provincial 
little brawl, when my mother flung at me in lieu of argu- 
ment a strange mixture of French social theory and 
financial fact. Stung by my silence, she said at last: 

“Well.^ Have you nothing to say? No, I suppose 
not; you do not talk much nowadays. I suppose you 


358 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


have become an Englishman.” Quickly she adcleil^ as if 
she expected me to interrupt her: “ One has only to look 
at you, at your broad boots, that ridiculous hat that falls 
over your ears, and to smell your clothes. Pouah! ** she 
said, pointing at my tweed coat ; “ you smell like a fire 
when the wood is damp.” 

I did not reply; I pulled at my pipe and thought that 
I had never smoked anything so disgusting as this French 
tobacco. No, I reflected, I am not an Englishman, but 
what the devil am I among all these things that gall me? 

Cobbles in the streets, how you made the old cabs rattle 
behind the wretched French horses! Trams, how you 
roared! And people too, how you roared, wrangled and 
boasted ! I hated you, hated you — mean, avaricious, petty, 
boastful people; overfed, sensual, brutal people — hated 
your cynicism and your hedonism, hated you because you 
had no illusions and no ideals — I was rejected of the 
French. I rejected them. 

Away, away — anywhere — or where the buds are fragile, 
the blossoms tremulous, the air blue. 

Stanley wrote, asking me to come back. . . . 

To England, yes, to England, anywhere, only to get 
away. 


XII 

I stood at the peak of the steamer. The cliffs of Dover 
slowly rose upon the skyline, swathed in grey mist. My 
face was wet with soft English rain. 


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CHAPTER I 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 

I 

I LEANT back in the office chair that swung under ray 
weight, looked out across Gracechurch Street. January, 
rain spattering on the windows, rain, rain, and above the 
glistening roof opposite, a blade of yellow-white, water- 
soaked sky. Behind rae the fire spat and crackled, and 
there was a little crunching rumble as the lumps of coal 
crushed down the burning wood. I was idle, looked at the 
brilliant cuffs that protruded from my well-pressed sleeves; 
I was pleased with myself, with the sleek back of my 
head when I stroked it. Still interested in my new pos- 
sessions, I looked at my roll-top desk, its choked pigeon- 
holes, at the filing cabinet against the wall and its drawers 
marked “ Forward Shipments,” “ Outward freight,” “ L.C. 
Private.” It was “L.C. Private” delighted me; behind 
its label was my all-important personality. L.C., twenty- 
seven, junior partner in what I knew to be a rising firm. 

But idling did not do, at least not yet. I drew myself 
up, rang the bell. It is a queer little scene. Miss Condon 
comes in, stands obedient by my desk, very quiet and 
ready to take down my money-making phrases. She is 
pretty, with her brown hair braided over her temples, 
with her eyes that puzzle me because I never know whether 
they are grey, blue, green or yellow. But noblesse oblige 
when you are a partner. I reprove Miss Condon; I tell 
her that I am not “ Yours sincerely ” to Mr. Bent and 
that it must not happen again. Also I will not have 
“traveller” spelled with one I until we open an American 
branch. Then, to comfort Miss Condon (who does not 

361 


362 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


really want comforting after years of this sort of thing) 
I tell her jocularly that Shelley spells “traveller” with 
two Vs; I say this because Miss Condon is addicted to the 
poet and has been known to say that she wished she’d 
been his secretary. But Miss Condon is not to be chaffed: 
she moistens the point of the pencil and waits her em- 
ployer’s pleasure. 

“ Dear Sirs_,” I begin. “ With regard to the delivery of 
50 tons of copper ex-s.s. Iquiqui, we beg to say ” 

The telephone rings. Somebody who calls me “ Sir ” 
says that an all-powerful bank craves an audience. Let 
the bank wait. Stanley comes in and listens while I dictate, 
his sharp eyes on me, his knubbly fingers on the edge of 
my desk. When I have dismissed Miss Condon with my 
passionate protest against a deduction, he says negligently: 

“ I’ve got Smith Brothers. They’re going to let us do 
about eight hundred tons of printed calico for the West 
Coast if we can get the rate down for them. It’s a cut 
rate . . . still . . .” 

Eight hundred tons of cargo! I don’t suppose we would 
do much more than curse those small orders if eight 
hundred tons came in to-day. But then . . . the rapture. 
My insistent, introspective self asks me whether there is 
a kiss in the world so good as eight hundred tons of printed 
calico. 


II 

We were bloated, but it must not be thought that we 
were the talk of the London docks. The Syren and Fair- 
play made short, if flattering references to the reappear- 
ance in the Port of the ancient name of Cadoresse; good 
wishes from Hugh Lawton came to me in a roundabout 
way and evoked no response. For I did not want good 
wishes ; I was going to “ give them one.” I felt I was 
“ giving them one ” when our offices opened one sultry 
July morning; it was already a victory to have a share in 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 


S6S 


an office, in the concentration Miss Condon stole from 
Shelley and the vast inefficiency of Baring, our bookkeeper- 
cum-invoice clerk and handy man. All this state had 
been provided out of Stanley’s capital, a bare thousand 
pounds, for I was only the junior partner, taking forty 
per cent, of profits after capital had been remunerated 
on a scale varying with those profits between five and 
fifteen per cent. The firm lived in three small rooms, 
one for Stanley, one for me and one where Baring received 
inquiries, kept the books, the tea-set and the copying-press, 
and made out bills of lading while Miss Condon drew 
from her typewriter sounds that made one think of a Maxim 
in action. 

But we were proud of our office, of our stationery, of 
our heading: “ Stanley, Cadoresse & Co.” I think we 
rather overdid our heading, for we put it on followers, 
on the books, on the inquiry office blotting pad; we even 
had our stamps perforated with our august initials. We 
loved our office; we would have patted it if we could, 
though it was our master as well as our love. For those 
early days were hard enough ; business came swiftly, thanks 
to those faithful friends who believed in Stanley and to 
the few in the Port who wanted to deal with us because 
the word “ Cadoresse ” reminded them of my father and 
of the ’eighties, the ’seventies, when they were young. 
I traded shamelessly on the reputation of the old sea- 
captain, abased myself before my angry mother so far as 
to ask her to give me the names of his old friends. She 
gave them, and a few who were still alive and very, 
very aged, received me well. One of them I remember best, 
a merchant with a face that might have been carved out 
of yellow wood, seamed with hundreds of criss-crossing 
wrinkles, and a toothless mouth closed very tight. Alone 
in the dead face of the old man, who was, I think, nearly 
ninety, the eyes lived, luminous and pale as water. 

“ So you’re young Cadoresse,” he said. “ Young 
Cadoresse.” He said this seven or eight times. ** I knew 


364 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


your father very well. Let me see^ if he had lived, he 
would have been . . 

He could not remember, and I tried to help him, but 
at once his mind wandered, and he began once more his 
aimless “ So you’re young Cadoresse . . . young Cador- 
esse . . He lived in the past; his stories were of my 
father as a shipmaster, and most of the stories were unre- 
peatable, for they showed what a “ frightful rip ” the 
old merchant had been; he had not noticed the Boer w^ar, 
but he remembered very well consigning foodstuffs to Paris 
after the surrender to the Germans, and his Paris still had 
its Emperor, its Taglioni. The luminous old eyes saw 
far beyond me, into an England devoid of Board schools; 
further yet, beyond even 1832 and the Reform Bill agita- 
tion . . . they were still talking of Boney and Waterloo 
when he was a little boy. 

But he gave me business. “ I couldn’t have refused your 
father,” he said. “ Heavens ! how funny he was sailing 
his ship in a frock-coat and a top-hat — tea-caddy I used to 
call him . . .” 

My eyes filled with tears. Oh, heredity, that you 
should have chosen such an instrument as Maud to brand 
me as my father’s son! The old man introduced me to 
his grey-bearded “ boys,” who treated him a little rudely, 
as if they knew he did not matter in the office, where he 
solemnly sat behind a newspaper and gazed at the wall 
and answered the leading questions of the chief clerk. The 
questions were manufactured and affected nothing, but the 
old man answered them with immense, concentrated inter- 
est, in the midst of respectful silence. This time he de- 
cided we should be given a show, and we were, for his 
sons liked our methods. 

This was not very w^onderful, for my mind was French; 
that is to say, I was hard, logical, punctual and con- 
temptuous of no detail; I was very sharp and ready to 
take advantage of anybody, to bluff and to lie over a 
deal; but once the terms were made and my word given 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 


S65 


my quondam antagonist could be sure that I would not 
fail him and that I would carry out my contract to the 
letter, even if I were bound only by word of mouth. I 
despised the kindly old merchant, the stupid English 
sentimentality that made him promise us a show because 
he had known my father, and I respected but little more 
the sons who allowed their suspicions to be overcome- by 
his senile amiability. But that did not concern me; I took 
the order and, by aggressively flaunting before the African 
& Asiatic Steamship Company a non-existent cheap rate 
quoted by the London and Burmese, which I knew these 
careless Englishmen would not trouble to check, procured 
so cut a rate that we completely captured the firm’s 
business. 

Our rates went up after we had caught them, and I 
do not think Stanley quite liked my methods. 

“ You work like an American trust,” he said. Bluff, 
bounce, make a loss, cut it, capture the market — and when 
you’ve captured it, sweat it.” 

“Well? What’s caught?” 

“ You even talk American,” said Stanley, laughing. 
“We dropped nearly sixty pounds over that Otranto 
business.” 

“ And we’ve got pretty well every ton of coal Mor- 
risons ’ll send to Oporto this year — there’s hundreds in the 
brokerage alone, and we may make a bit if we chance 
chartering a ship ourselves.” 

“ They will find you out,” said Stanley. “ One of these 
days they’ll realise you’re not cutting rates so fine as you 
used to.” 

“ They won’t,” I said confidently. “ Englishmen are 
careless of detail; if I were a merchant I’d put my business 
out to tender. But not they; they’re English. Lazy 
brutes.^’ 

Stanley did not mind my abusing the English. “ I’m 
not English,” he sometimes said, “ I’m a mathematician.” 
His attitude was one of indifference to trifles that involved 


366 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


no philosophic generalisations ; his role was to collect 
facts and sift them; he made himself a master of the 
movements of ships all over the world; he knew who sailed 
in ballast and bluffed that it was timber; he knew who 
quietly took in guns and ammunition for the coast of 
Tripoli and Somaliland; he knew what master drank and 
what merchant would place an order with a white man 
and kick a Bengali clerk down the steps of the veranda; 
who it was could not forget tiny Sariti and her little paper 
house at Yokohama^ and he knew why there was a sound 
like broken glass and a strong smell of spirits when the 
Emily Mary had a funeral in Boston roads and reverently 
lowered the coffin while a guileless American gunboat 
dipped its pennant. 

Stanley looked upon the shipping trade as an exercise 
in psychology, a game of chess where you played with men 
(and a little with women) ; by that queer, flashing process 
of deduction of which I had once been the victim he dis- 
covered exactly what a man keenly wanted, but hid behind 
a careless mask and a cigar, and he knew how to stroke 
vanities, to stab jealousies to the quick. It was I, though, 
generally went out into the offices, to bluff, to strut, to 
advance and kick the weak, to fawn before the strong. I 
loved it, I exulted in it. I did not want to know my' 
man, as did Stanley; I liked to come at him as he seemed, 
to cheat him, to bully him — until it was all over and, my 
contract in my pocket, I shook hands with my antagonist 
and decided to treat him fairly. 

“ I go in for honour,” I said to Stanley; “ it pays.” 

It did, for our efficiency was terrific, and we flaunted 
it. I made a practice of never fixing appointments for 
“ eleven ” or “ three ” ; no, I fixed “ ten past eleven ” or 

twenty to three.” And I was there exactly on time, for 
I always arrived a little too early, and waited outside 
until I had only thirty seconds to climb the stairs. We 
drilled Baring and Miss Condon to make out documents 

while you wait ” ; we always, in presence of some mer- 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 


367 


chant, wanted some undefined (but agreed) paper, so that 
Baring might find it on the card-index in fifteen seconds. 
“ Fifteen seconds,” we would say, proudly, to the impressee. 
But if our efficiency was terrific, so was our labour; every 
letter and document was checked four times; we refused 
to take information from the Shipping Gazette, but com- 
pared it with Lloyd’s Weekly Index. We took nothing 
on trust; if we had needed Greenwich time we would have 
correlated it with Paris time and checked by measuring 
the difference in minutes on the map. In seven months 
we did not make a single mistake — but for the first three 
we stayed at the office every night up to eleven o’clock, 
except Sundays, when we were lazy and left at nine. Once 
Miss Condon came, on a sweltering August night, to say 
she felt faint: I threw her a sovereign and told her to 
get back to her machine, “ slick.” England had a summer 
that year, and all through it we worked, canvassing for 
orders, interviewing hundreds of people, marketing risks 
(for we cut a little into marine assurance), struggling for 
obnoxious trade such as guano and explosives. And when 
other men had closed their offices, when some of them 
were in bed, there we sat, the four of us, Stanley and I 
fed by the fury of our young ambition. Baring and Miss 
Condon by gibes and doles; there we were, circularising, 
applying insolently for contracts that would have filled 
the P. & O. fleet, shouting (in English English) that we 
were right there with the goods, planning, scheming. 

It was wonderful, it was romantic, this fierce creation. 
Our business was no wretched child which we would allow 
to grow; no, we were going to bring it up in the forcing- 
house, feed it on some Wellsian “Food of the Gods,” 
made out of our brains and bodies. Stanley saw the 
romance of it. 

“ Here we are,” he said, “ with our fingers at the throat 
of the world, shaking it to make it pay up. All the 
world . . .” He indicated the big Mercator map on the 
wall. “ Shanghai, we’re sending creosoted sleepers there 


368 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


on that old tub the Urmiah . . . and Cardiff; coal — coal 
for the Port. It’s we who’re handling it, thousands of 
tons of it — we’ll handle millions of tons — cranes, baskets 
— hear it, Cadoresse ? Hear it rattle down the chutes, 
millions of tons, to cook the Lord Mayor’s dinner and 
warm the slippers of Mr. Thirty-Bob- A- Week at Clapham. 
And New York City — Bombay — the whole blasted ant- 
heap — Good Lord ! ” He breathed heavily, as if awed by 
the globe enormously spinning within our walls. 

But I did not see it like that. Enough romance, I 
was too old for that silly game. I was out for money, 
revenge. The English wouldn’t have me? That was O.K., 
I’d not have a nationality at all, I’d be a cosmopolitan, 
I’d drip with gold in every European Hotel Metropole, 
I’d have three cars at my door, and cars for my servants 
that the English peerage couldn’t afford ; and I would 
travel — to the fiords on my yacht, to the East with my 
caravan, my armed escort, my camels and my dancing girls ; 
and if I liked I’d be an Englishman as a pastime, buy 
myself ten thousand English votes, the right to make 
laws for Englishmen, a seat in the Cabinet if I had to 
double the party funds. I’d be rich enough to buy John 
Bull’s shirt and turn him, naked, out of his island . . . 
And here I was, in the principality which was going to be 
an empire, well-clad and gloating over our trial balance- 
sheet. The first six months showed a profit, capital ex- 
penditure entirely written off. It was not every young 
firm brought that off; but that was nothing: let England 
wait. 


Ill 

And so we rushed onwards, urging our little business 
to beat every week the record it had established seven 
days before and succeeding, pound by pound, so determined 
were we to win, so ready to ship anything between a 
historic mansion for re-erection in New York State and 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 


S69 


a halfpenny packet of pins. Between us Stanley and I 
evoked a code of daring, a sort of samurai gospel which 
bade us shrink from nothing. One morning we were rung 
up by the Lea Ironworks; they were put through to 
Stanley and said: 

“ Can you ” 

“ Yes,” said Stanley, interrupting. 

The audacious interruption went the round of the docks: 
Stanley, Cadoresse & Co. did not need to know what it 
was people wanted them to do, asked no questions as to 
place or date, did not care whether there was yellow fever 
in every port and a dock strike in the bargain. No, they 
just said “ Yes.” And the joke served us well. I went 
one morning into the office of Alston Brothers to charter 
a starred A for a new client. 

“ I don’t know you,” said the manager. “ And I don’t 
know your principal. Don’t care for that sort of business.” 

Thomas Alston came into the office, a paper in his hand, 
and at once the manager grew more truculent, so as to 
show his chief what a sound man he was. 

“ Don’t care for it,” he growled. “ People come along 
every day with twopence and think they can do what 
they like with our boats — mess up the hold with leaky 
barrels of tar — get us into trouble with half-a-dozen 
harbour-masters before they’ve done.” 

“ Stanley, Cadoresse & Co. play the game,” I said, quite 
as truculently. 

“Oh, is that who you are?” said Thomas Alston. He 
looked at me rather kindly, winked a cunning grey eye. 
“You’re the people who always say ‘Yes,* aren’t you? 
Give the babies a chance, Mr. Marston.” 

We chartered the ship and she made an excellent 
voyage. Two months later Thomas Alston rang up “ the 
babies ” to know whether they would like to look out for 
freight for his new Tunisian line, in which case he might 
break a rule and give them a monopoly. 

“ The babies ” boastfully replied that they would charter 


370 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


the ships themselves, and they filled them every one, for 
they went the round of the exporters’ representatives pro- 
testing they already had the monopoly : as a result they 
got it. Once only did we come down on a rash speculation, 
for one of our hired vessels was held uj;j somewhere in 
the West Indies, by an accident to the only crane that 
could lift our goods, for four days beyond the lay days. 
I remember Stanley’s anxious face when he came in with 
the cable that told us we were already liable for two 
days’ demurrage at sixpence a register ton. A hundred 
pounds ! 

“ Gosh! ” said Stanley. “ Ten days’ll all but break us.” 
Then he impartially damned the authorities, the makers 
of the crane and the wretched niggers who had put it out 
of gear. 

On the third day I sent an expensive cable telling the 
dock company we would sue them for damages, which 
was idiotic, as the company had an Act of God and accident 
clause that covered it; but the cable relieved me so much 
that, on the fourth day, I was almost cheerful when Stanley 
and I talked over our pipes of filing our petition and 
camping in Carey Street. 

The crane was restored on the fourth day and we scraped 
through with a fine of two hundred pounds; the money 
was not wasted, for it taught us that a young firm must 
not speculate. I do not think we chartered a ship again 
for two years, except once or twice when we knew that 
somebody was in the market, slipped in and re-sold him 
the charter-party with a profit of a few pence per ton. 

We recovered some of our self-esteem over the great 
rat case. We had shipped eight cases of Cheddar cheese, 
destined for India, where Englishmen insist on English 
fare when the temperature is 108. Two of the cases were 
so badly stowed that the lids worked loose; as a result 
rats entered the cases and, when the goods were landed 
at Bombay, it was found that every one of the hundred 
cheeses had been nibbled. I can see our client now, cable 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 


371 


in hand; he was a very fat, very red little German, whose 
legs were so short and whose voice was so high that I had 
to hold down my laughter by force; he was so exactly like 
“ the dying pig ” in indiarubber that the hawkers were 
selling outside for sixpence. 

“Shpoiled!” he squeaked; “every plessed cheese 
shpoiled. I make you reshponshible. I make de captain 
reshponshible. I go to law. I prosecute.” 

We pointed out that the stevedore 

“ Damn de shtevedore,” he screamed, waving the cable. 
“ Dis is cheek you talk. You shpoil my cheese. You — 
you take de biscuit.” 

The little German burst out of our office some seconds 
later, jamming his silk hat on his square head, vowing 
he would “prosecute.” But we could not stop laughing; 
the association of cheese and biscuits was too much for 
us. Besides, we were not liable, being merely agents; 
all we risked was the loss of a small client. Still, we had 
for our credit’s sake to see what could be done; the case 
seemed unpleasant, as inquiry showed that the ship had 
carried six cats. I had given up hope when Stanley came 
into my room nearly five weeks later with an expression 
on his ascetic face that made him look like a monk who 
has caught a carp on Thursday evening. 

“ Talking about cats,” he said, and stopped to grin. 

“ Cats?” 

“Yes. And cheese. You remember?” 

“ Oh, yes, that rat business.” 

“ Well,” said Stanley, negligently, “ I just thought about 
it a bit. Slack lot of cats on that boat, don’t you think? 
Six cats ought to have watched those two cases.” 

“ Oh, do say what you mean. This isn’t a missing word 
competition.” 

“ I thought;” repeated Stanley. “ Then I cabled to our 
people: ' Any cats on board.’ The reply was, * No.’ ” 

“ No,” I cried, “ but they shipped ” 

“ They did. Therefore the cats had vanished. I waited, 


372 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


met her at Tilbury, went on board, got hold of the 
cook ” 

“ Why the cook? ’’ 

“ He was likely to be interested in cheese. I told him 
a story of a musical cat I used to have — and a story about 
how my brother-in-law’s dog ran away, suggested canaries, 
kept the conversation zoological. By the time I’d done 
he was sick of hearing me talk and was just bursting with 
animal anecdotes. He told me four, including one about 
a pet chimpanzee, and then ” The thin, dark face be- 

came as sly as that of a fox. “ Then — well — the ship 
did take six cats at Tilbury, but they all ate some stuff 
that disagreed with them or something felinicide happened. 
Anyhow, they slung the last of them overboard off Dover, 
absolutely dead.” 

I took it in. The owners were caught and must pay 
compensation; of course, they had no chance against a firm 
conducted like Scotland Yard. 

Great days! Now we have our own fleet and our own 
flag, quite a jolly flag, a white S and a red C on a blue 
ground, with a yellow edge. But we’re so great that, 
somehow, the days are not so great. 

IV 

I do not suppose any better cure could have been found 
for my bruised soul than this successful creation of the 
firm. When the first of July and the first anniversary 
came round, I discovered that a little of my harshness 
had gone. I was not rich yet, could not hope for much 
more than two hundred pounds or two hundred and fifty 
that year, but I was my own master and, every month, 
we were doing that little better which meant we were 
going to do very well. The hard work had saved me, 
prevented me from brooding, saved me from dreams and 
almost from regrets, for a man does not every night of 
three months collapse as he gets into bed and yet find 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 


373 


time to think of the girl who passed. After three months 
habit does the rest. Edith ! I did not think of her every 
day then, for my business was my love. When I did think 
of her I ached, but the pain was bearable, and soon some 
commercial anxiety ousted it; Edith had become ghostly, 
was no longer the girl I loved but a faint memory, like 
the pretty chime of a church bell that one remembers, 
or a scent of lavender. I had not seen her once since that 
night of encounters; I had seen none of her friends and 
was just beginning to have time for new ones. Once or 
twice I had met Mr. Lawton, who nodded distantly ; I 
had spoken to Hugh in the street and received with cold 
thanks his good wishes for our success. Edith had not 
been mentioned, and often I liked to tell myself that I 
had forgotten her, that I loved her no more. 

A little for that reason, I think, and a little because I 
gained some freedom when we increased our staff by 
Mortimer, who superseded Baring, and by an office-boy, 
I found that my old taste for adventure returned to me. 
Oh, no idealistic interest! Edith, Maud, the others, had 
smashed that; I was hard, and my gaiety, my pleasures 
were hard. But — I despised myself a little — success was 
softening me; I was not quite as hard as I had been, I 
began to see once more the dangerous, delicious grace of 
English girls. I smiled back at those who served my 
meals, sold me stationery, took my name. Once I talked 
Shelley with Miss Condon. 

I pulled myself up, told myself this would never do. 
But I was melting, melting like an iceberg that drifts south. 

Folkestone helped me, and its summer girls, but it did 
not save me; I shivered when I thought that my old self 
was rising again. At Folkestone I met the summer girls 
for the first time, as I had never before taken an August 
holiday in England; this one I took at Folkestone because 
I think I had come to hate the French m.ore than the 
English and did not want to join my mother at Pontaillac, 
• there to see the Southern peacocks strut. Folkestone Leas, 


S74 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


vastness of short, charred grass and asphalt; hotels of 
Babelian ambition and boarding-houses with august names; 
little, steep streets aiming for the sea, and, far below, 
white dots which are bathing machines; enormous pleasure 
ground, temporary antheap hoisted into smartness by the 
staid grace of some women and the bulky wealth of motor- 
cars. And girls ! Girls who came from London and are 
there unseen, in chrysalides no doubt and butterflies only 
in August, who perpetually walk up and down the Leas 
in white, or pink, or light blue frocks, in violent-coloured 
sweaters and the smallest white shoes; girls whose hair 
blows unruly about their fair, arch faces, who are always 
laughing, sometimes giggling with elaborate, cheap beaus, 
straight from the City but wearing round their hats the 
colours of the Grenadier Guards or the Oxford half-blue. 
They were adorable, light as the woolly petals of the 
dandelions the wind blows from the fields, and so obviously 
happy in their brief radiance. They did everything con- 
spicuously; they walked arm-in-arm with the beaus, and 
their attitude proclaimed that they knew they were walking 
thus; they stopped to laugh at anything, a peculiar dog, 
a rival sweater, a frock-coated German clerk. They made 
love too, with the complete innocence and abandon of their 
kind. In the evening, not far from the electric standards, 
I could hear giggles, requests for information as to what 
they were taken for, and smothered “ Don’t be sillys,” 
followed by the thrilling little noise of baffled kisses. I 
was no longer morose; with good-natured cynicism I took 
my share of these Saturnalia of the Innocents, the very 
small share involved in the exchange of shy looks at the 
bottom of the Leas elevator, the shy looks that meant: 
“ Oh, pay my penny and be my pal.” Other trifles, too, 
modest mixed bathing and most limited privileges of ad- 
miration from a distance, little journeys to Hythe and the 
Smuggler’s Retreat on the coastline omnibus, more auda- 
cious trips to Boulogne, solemn tea at the most imperial 
Imperial Hotel, and half-hours next the band, but not so 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 


375 


near that I might not hold firm, sunburnt hands and give, 
by very light kisses, cause to be told I must not be so 
desperate a kid. 

It was nothing, it did not mean anything; it was not 
love, but a pretty mummery, a contract of companionship 
in which each party found profits of pride because seen in 
conversation with one of the other sex. I remember the 
word “ Dora,” and somebody’s tight black curls that fell 
over Irish blue eyes. That is all; for that is all there 
was: eighteenth-century badinage brought up to date by 
a municipal band and a Virginia cigarette. My intensities 
did not rebel against the code; indeed, I liked it, liked to 
feel that I was not to be involved in terrible adventures, 
that I might make love — without prejudice. Lifted then 
from the ferocities of my dead attitudes, I could enter 
into the spirit of the artificial town, play tennis without 
touching hands, cycle into the country and rest in woods, 
there to make love so lightly that tea mattered more than 
kisses, dance even without emotion; for blue eyes, grey 
eyes, brown eyes, aglow and merry, all told the same 
tale: let us be gay and risk no suffering; we are the 
butterflies, and when the winter comes we must hibernate 
until the summer calls its girls again; so do not handle us 
roughly, summer beau, do not ask us to thrill and love 
and ache, lest we may have to pay the price. No, summer 
beau, be with us another butterfly and flit with us in the 
clearings while the sun shines. 

I had been lonely, lonely without women: how long is 
a day without caresses! 


V 

Stanley too, and Mrs. Stanley, were in the conspiracy. 
Now I often went to the little house at Esher to dine and 
talk. Mrs. Stanley had been given a full account of my 
adventures, knew that my engagement had been broken 
off and that I had subsequently lost my character; at 


376 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 

first she was a little inelined to treat me like a convalescent, 
to receive my remarks on the weather and the London 
and South-Western railway with a sympathetic air, to 
suggest that I had suffered but should through her be 
healed. Soon, however, as she mistook my cynicism for 
gaiety, she resumed her inconsequent, clumsy and subtly 
delightful airs; she never, and it must have cost her an 
effort, alluded to my romantic past, but she took great 
pains to show me that she thought none the less well of 
me on account of the scandalousness of that past. She 
even discussed free-love in an obtrusive way which 
amused me very much. 

“ I don’t think it would work,” she said, confidentially. 
“ You see, it’s all very well when women are young and 
pretty, but when you get tired of us what’s to become of 
us.i* I suppose you’d send us to the workhouse.” 

“You’re too subjective in your theory,” I said. 

“ I don’t know what that means, but you must look 
upon it from the woman’s point of view. Mind you, I 
don’t see that it matters a bit if it’s going to last; the 
registrar and the vicar — after all, they’re only details.” 

Stanley and I both laughed, for Mrs. Stanley was quietly 
pious and a little ashamed of her fondness for a neigh- 
bouring chapel-of-ease : but then a sweet woman will gen- 
erally be quite immoral if she is required to cheer a man 
up. Her simplicity, her transparence, the bird-like agility 
with which she leapt from politics to domesticity and then, 
via the baby’s teeth, to eugenic segregation, the broad 
jollity of her, all contributed to crack wherever it touched 
the hard coating of my cynicism. When we arrived to- 
gether from the City she would rush into the hall, and 
while Stanley was being kissed I could hear her soliloquise 
to him: 

“ Baby’s been very naughty. What d’you think he did.^ 
He stole all the tape out of my work-basket, tied it to 
Pat’s neck and hauled him about the floor, shouting: Puffer! 
And Pat was taking it like an angel, but he’s been sick. 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 377 

That was just before Mrs. Hoskin came in. Do you know 
her brother’s going to put up for the District Council.^ 
I’m sure I don’t know why unless it’s because he’s a 
builder. Which reminds me : Did you tell Benetfink 
that ” 

“ I told Benetfink,” said Stanley, laughing as he freed 
himself, “ and the other topics are adjourned. Now 
curtsey to Mr. Cadoresse, if a dumpling can curtsey.” 

She curtseyed, shook hands as she apologised for not 
having seen me, her eyes round and gay, her mouth pouting 
because she was mildly snubbed. 

“We have such a lot to talk about, old three-yards 
and I,” she said. 

They did have a great deal to talk about, this incon- 
gruous couple, and they sandwiched it with rather startling 
suddenness between leading questions, tactfully designed 
to draw me out on my own topics. Indeed, the conversa- 
tion at dinner resembled nothing so much as a shower 
of shooting stars, so rapidly did subject after subject fall 
into our midst; it was Mrs. Stanley started them one after 
the other, bewildered us by frequent rushes into side-issues 
and by literal rushes when the crash of crockery or a wail 
from the first floor showed that something was happening 
in the kitchen or the nursery. Stanley gazed at her with 
silent but undisguised delight: when he had stared long 
enough she would make a face at him, usually by inflating 
her cheeks, compressing her mouth and shutting her eyes. 
Then, suddenly: 

“ Well, is that a good melon for you, you old scarlet 
runner ? ” 

They were ridiculous, adorable. Mrs. Stanley’s pretti- 
ness, her white skin, blue eyes, fair hair, the completeness 
with which her body concealed her bones, made to me such 
an appeal that my harshness had always gone before the 
evening’s end. I never thought of making love to her, 
which I could have done in her husband’s presence, for he 
would not have understood; but I don’t think she would 


378 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


have understood either. Besides, her mixture of simplicity 
and originality baffled me ; sweet, languid women, and fierce, 
wild women — I knew how to manage those, but intellect 
informed by innocence was beyond me. Besides, I was a 
sort of Englishman now, and the code of respect weighed 
heavy upon me. 

I think, though, I was happier when alone with Stanley 
after dinner. Then, slowly sucking at our pipes, we could 
discuss interminably the chances we had of capturing an 
order from some exporter, consider whether certain ex- 
penses could be cut down or some others profitably 
incurred. Or, deciding we must not talk shop, we would 
debate some political question. I was still a Radical, with 
a touch of the Anarchist, for I detested the organised 
utopia of the Socialists, but Stanley called himself a Tory 
Democrat; that is to say, held a license to consider himself 
more progressive than my own party while defending the 
Crown, the Church, the landlord and the publican. Also 
he was a vigorous tariff reformer and converted me regu- 
larly once a month, for I fortunately recovered from his 
attaeks as I read my morning paper. He was very exas- 
perating and quite as dishonest as I was ; considerable 
light was shed upon the value of our arguments when we 
found that, in one of those interminable debates on Pro- 
tection, we had both quoted from the same table of world 
wages — only I had selected the countries and trades that 
proved Free Trade England most bountiful, Stanley those 
that demonstrated the wretched condition of the British 
working man. I did not care for those dry economics ; but 
Stanley had his flights. 

“ You know,” he said once, pointing at me a knubbly 
brown finger, “ all this sort of thing, politics, it’s a rotten 
game. Sort of street row. You shout black, and I 
shout white, and it’s grey all the time. What we want is 
something to chuck all the ideas into until they get mixed; 
a sort of intellectual melting-pot.” The piercing eyes 
became dreamy as they gazed at the red wall. “ All that 


STANLEY, CADORESSE & CO. 


S79 


talk of sending the L.C.C. kids to Paris for a week, and 
having four hundred German boys here . . . showing "em 
St. Paul’s and the chute at Earl’s Court . . . rot, all that. 
They haven’t got any ideas. They only do what Cam- 
bridge and Harvard tell them. We’ve got to mix up the 
people who’ve got a chance to get ideas, not only those 
who haven’t. The Carlton Club ought to swap a hundred 
members every year with the Reform — or why shouldn’t 
the Reichstag let English M.P.’s make a law or two for 
the Germans.^ Mix it all up, that’s the idea. Scotch 
manses for bishops . . . male charwomen . . . Swiss 
toreadors . . . give the navy vodka instead of rum.” 

New friends, too, came into my life; Hoskin, the builder, 
who filled his fancy waistcoats to bursting, and Mr. Shep- 
herd, who thought, probably because I was not an English- 
man but merely a benighted foreigner, that he ought to 
win me over from Rome. Their wives, their daughters, 
direct people of the tweed and stiff collar type, people 
who had never heard of the Stage Society, but were willing 
to play tennis with me or to risk a wetting when I punted. 
I had found a new England where nobody pretended, 
where everybody was busy doing simple, muscular things; 
the women were neither urban nor suburban; they were 
frank, fresh, and when an occasional flirtation involved 
me, I found a new pleasure in rapid, innocent kisses after 
which there lingered in my nostrils neither powder nor 
scent. 

Once more I was becoming human. 


CHAPTER II 


RECONSTRUCTION 

I 

Early in that year I had rejoined the Liberal Club^ 
less because politics called me than because I found myself 
lonely; I rejoined in a cynical mood, telling myself that 
I didn’t care what became of the rotten country, but that 
I might have some fun in the rough and tumble. In my 
earlier enthusiasm I had been righteously angry when the 
Lords rejected the Education Bill, the Plural Voting Bill 
and the Licensing Bill, though I had little liking for 
religious education in any form and was individualist 
enough to think a man had a right to be drunk if he chose; 
after my emotional disaster I do not think that for a 
year I read a single political speech; the Small Holdings 
Act, which should have fired my imagination, went unper- 
ceived by me through the Upper House, and it was only 
later, when human desires and human interests began once 
more to grow round me, that I realised politics as likely 
to amuse me. 

I think it was the new spirit of Liberalism attracted 
me. Within seven or eight months of the general election 
I had sneered at the Liberals because they showed no 
inclination to tackle the Lords; I had even, in the face 
of a shocked club, likened Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman 
to the celebrated commander who marched his soldiers 
up the hill and marched them down again. But, in the 
early days of 1908, I discovered in the Liberal papers 
distinct signs of anger, realised that, faced with so “ game ” 
an assembly as the Lords, the Liberals would eventually 
have to do something, if only because a noisy minority 

380 


RECONSTRUCTION 


381 


of the rank-and-file wanted something done. I harboured 
no illusions as to the voice of the people; I had heard 
it at Hambury shouting more or less beerily, more or less 
aitchlessly, and generally talking the most obvious non- 
sense; I knew too that the mandate the people gave its 
elect was on the whole to make the other fellows sorry 
they spoke, and that the mandate would duly be reversed 
when the people thought they would like new bread and 
especially new circuses; I knew that elections were decided 
less by alternative convictions than by alternative regrets: 
if I had not held the business of politics cheap I should 
not again have taken it up, for I wanted an amusement, 
not a religion. As I saw looming in the near future a 
great row with the Bishops and the Lords I decided to 
be in it: for a Frenchman loves a row as much as an 
Irishman, particularly when the opponents are prelates 
and aristocrats. 

It was in this contemptuous, defiant and pugnacious 
spirit I appeared before Cloggie. The old man held out 
both hands to me, and I guessed that he would have 
kissed me if he had been a Frenchman. He looked no 
older, for years are nothing after the seventieth; his white 
hair was as thick; his blue eyes were as benevolent and 
bright under their shaggy white eyebrows. “ Good boy, 
good boy,” he remarked a large number of times as he 
held my hand. “ Thought you’d never come back again. 
What you been up to.^ Sowing wild oats? Well, well, 
I been through it too. I know.” Cloggie winked at me 
as one gay dog meeting another. “ Do you know,” he 
said, confidentially, “ they used to call me the Girls’ Own, 
at Dudley, back in the ’sixties. That was before I met 
Him,” he added, hurriedly. “ He made a new man of 
me, did William Ewart. Did I ever tell you about that 
night in ’74 when He spoke at Bradford and I held His 
colt? ” 

I let Cloggie describe the scene again, displaced this 
time some dozen years and located in a new town. As 


382 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


he spoke, telling, I suspect, the plot of a dream, I liked 
him more than I cared to think. Old Cloggie stood with 
one arm outstretched, imitating the great man, with a 
glow in his eyes and something of the tempest of Glad- 
stone’s phrases in his voice. I understood that his leader 
was Cloggie’s god, that his speeches were his creed; sus- 
tained by a sentimental passion the old Whig soared, was 
splendid, was a tribune when he roared in William Ewart’s 
rolling tones the message to all the Smiths in Wolver- 
hampton. And, as suddenly, he was human again: 

“ Do you know.^ ” said Cloggie, “ I remembered you, 
wondered what’d become of you. Once I thought ... no 
. . . I never did, Mr. Clogg; you’re quite wrong. Sir — I 
said that these times were funny times, Mr. Clogg; not 
a word more.” 

He communed with the shade of Mr. Clogg and I sighed, 
thinking of Hambury and Edith. Then I shook him by 
the arm, for the altercation with the ghost was becoming 
violent. “ I never said he’d gone over to the Tories. 

No, Mr. Clogg, you’ve got no right ” I was just in 

time to save him from blasphemy, from telling the ghost 
of the pious founder of our library that he lied. Cloggie 
looked at me with mournful eyes. “ I never said you’d 
gone over to the Tories,” he protested. 

“ No, no, of course not,” I said, soothing the old man. 
“ I was busy, making my own business. Down with the 
Lords ! ” 

“Ah,” sighed Cloggie, rapturously. Then he glared at 
me in a purposeful way, censorious, and a faint North 
Country accent crept into his voice. “ That’s all very 
well shouting ‘ Down with the Lords,’ lad, but tha must 
gird up thy loins if tha want’st to fight the good fight . . . 
Beg pardon. Sir.? . . . Yes, Mr. Clogg, certainly ” 

He conferred with the shade, then solemnly: “What 
do you say to Progress and Poverty for a beginning.? ” 

I pressed one hand upon my heart: the first book 


RECONSTRUCTION 


383 


in my political education — Hambury — Edith. . . . Curse 
you, weak heart! what’s this to start you a-beating? 

“ Yes,” I said weakly, “ I’ll have that.” 

I took the dirty old book away. And I was very near 
tears when I found a note on page 8 : “ Ward Four 
c.r. 6.30.” Little dream girl, whom I had loved and won 
amid the dust of that election, you suddenly became the 
one reality in a dirty room papered with posters, littered 
with leaflets, crowded with canvassers, list-checkers, 
envelope addressers. . . . But I fought the dream and 
destroyed it: away with sentiment, and up with the struggle 
for life, the splendid anodyne. 

II 

Happy in his enterprise is the man free from love. 
Unburdened of the delicious load, his mind occupied by 
naught save his ambition, he can march undeflected to- 
wards his goal. Because he does not love he spares no 
man, and if he no longer hopes to love he stops at nothing; 
his brain is clear, he sees without feeling, and because he 
feels nothing he understands everything. Sympathy is 
a generous draught, but you cannot hold the cup to the 
lips of others unless you too have drunk; and the potent 
pity that heals another pervades you, softens you ; 
ordained in the priesthood of sorrow your brain struggles 
against your heart; you are drugged, you are beaten. 

I was not going to be beaten, for I was not going to 
thrill. I would make a great business, love no woman, 
but enjoy many, and I would make a toy of Parliaments. 
Calmly, then, I chose the Liberals because the chances 
of the rich City man were greater with them than with 
the Conservatives; that was just a question of numbers. 
Also I decided to be extreme, a little because I liked 
violent language, a great deal because I saw that the richer 
I became the more noble I would seem if I fought against 
wealth. I reappeared in the Club debates as an amazing 


384 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 

and suspected figure, as elaborately dressed as possible, 
never more informally than in a frock-coat; I wore fancy 
waistcoats, scented my handkerchief; sometimes I came 
in evening clothes. The little group of tradesmen and 
workmen hated me, I think, and my airs, but they could 
not withstand the acrid violence of my speeches. I was 
happy in their midst because I was playing a part, strutting 
as a fop and mouthing words that would have satisfied 
the Labour interest. 

Soon I had my party, about ten members out of sixty. 
We always occupied the same chairs and ostentatiously 
conferred with one another when the chairman stood up 
to put a resolution. My party comprised Cloggie, two 
railwaymen on the edge of Socialism, a gas-fitter, one of 
the most intemperate temperance men I have ever met; 
also a secularist elementary school teacher, three shop- 
keepers called Lewis, Evans and Lloyd, and an extraordi- 
nary person, Mr. Misling, who had rebelled against mere 
Liberalism because the Admiralty refused to try vege- 
tarianism in the Navy. We were the cranks, the danger- 
ous people ; we followed our parliamentary favourites 
closely, noted their speeches and their votes. I had a 
fancy for Palissy, the Radical potter; the school teacher 
quoted Mr. Beans’ questions with relish. There was Pon- 
sonby too, we liked him, and the member for Tottenham, 
while Mr. Misling periodically suggested that Mr. Bernard 
Shaw should be asked to contest our division, presumably 
in the lentil interest. We were absurd, but I knew what 
I was doing. I was making the heterogeneous 
homogeneous by harbouring myself all the oddities and 
all the discontents; I was extreme so as to collect the 
extremists, but I was going to use them, not to serve them. 
In March I was elected to the Executive and signalised 
my entry into the governing body by calling the Prime 
Minister weak-kneed and a traitor to his pledges. 

I think this was a happy period of my life; I led, I was 
followed by the few and viewed with undisguised bewilder- 


RECONSTRUCTION 


385 


ment by the many. I enjoyed the posturing, the game, the 
unreality of the business; like Stanley I played psycho- 
logical chess. I had the keenest sensations of pleasure 
when I led my little group to the attack of an amiable 
speaker who had come to us from the Temple Club. He 
was a young barrister with ambitions, who intended to do 
everything a gentleman could do to get into the London 
County Council; he was very round, so shaved and so 
brushed, so black and so white, so smiling, so bland, so 
archly daring, that our Radical group had begun to growl 
and shift its feet long before he was half through his 
speech. The young barrister had come to explain the 
Small Holdings Act, a subject calculated to rouse an urban 
Liberal Club, for it afforded the townsmen a chance of 
believing that they could interfere with the agriculturalists. 

“ You see,” said the young barrister, “ almost insuper- 
able difficulties stood in our path. Faced on the one side 
by the crying needs of the people who were deprived of 
access to the land, on the other by the legitimate claims 
of the landowners ” 

A few hisses. Shocked protest of the Chairman. 

“ We were compelled to progress with moderation and 
due consideration for the interests involved.” The young 
barrister smiled sweetly at my flushed face and at his 
elegant phrase. Endlessly he unrolled his periods, excusing 
the latitude given to Tory County Councils, suavely ex- 
plaining why limitations had been imposed on compulsory 
powers. . . . Real anger filled me for a moment as I 
realised that urbane youth as the conventional Liberal, 
determined to do as little as might accord with pledges, 
to shelter behind a convenient syllogism, a dilemma, an 
anecdote or a joke. “ Little fat boy, brief-fed, I loathe 
you,” I thought. Quite honestly I wanted a leader vuth 
blood in his body as I leapt to my feet with the group 
when questions were called for. It was a queer little scene. 
The Chairman sat framed between his funereal whiskers, 
horribly shocked, by the side of the bland Temple Clubber, 


386 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


who still smiled. The portraits of Cobden, Sir William 
Harcourt and the prospective Liberal candidate for our 
division stared from the walls at the little Radical group 
which had stood up en bloc. 

All together we shouted and shook our fists at the mild 
Daniel. 

“ Why don’t you nationalise the land ? ” roared the first 
railwayman. 

“Why don’t you nationalise the land?” repeated the 
second railwayman. 

“Will you provide houses?” asked Lloyd^ who owned 
a country cottage. 

“ Gentlemen ! gentlemen ! ” protested the Chairman. 

Evans demanded a national loan guaranteed on ducal 
estates. The temperance gas-fitter behaved so violently 
that some one shouted he was drunk. 

Amiable and urbane^ the young barrister took us up 
each in turn, explaining the Act with affected simplicity, 
as if addressing a Socialist Sunday School; he assured 
the railwaymen that one day, by and by, eventually (and 
so forth) “ the taxation of land-values would operate in 
the direction indicated by their remarks ” ; he assured 
Lloyd that rural housing preyed on the governmental mind ; 
he took quite seriously the vegetarian grievance of Mr. 
Misling and assured him that in the Navy a potato allow- 
ance was traditional. 

And then I was on my feet, speaking, so hot with rage 
that I do not remember exactly what I said. Phrases 
remain: “Playing and tinkering with abuses — juggling 

with words — foregoing omelets to save the eggs ” 

I think that I clamoured for revenge, for the break-up 
of the ducal estates, for minimum wages and State agri- 
cultural banks — I spoke to the music of hisses and cheers, 
and as I spoke I had a vision of a new, a wonderful land, 
a hotch-potch of Garden City and Merrie England — bath- 
rooms all round and maypoles on the village greens. 
Sturdy yeomen, farmers’ daughters — farmers riding to 


RECONSTRUCTION 


387 


hounds (subject to the right to shoot foxes). And big 
towns with laboratories, institutes, free libraries (that 
banned no novels) — athletics for clerks — morris dances 
in the slums, no, ex-slums, for I dropped rent into the 
bottomless pit. 

I found myself shouting for a new Enclosures Act. 

“A new Enclosures Act! No more filching of the peo- 
ple’s land by the rich, but an enclosure of ducal land 
with the dukes outside — and then you’ll have an island 
where it’ll be good to live under the Union Jack.” 

The young barrister glibly congratulated me on my ad- 
mirable speech and assured me that however distant my 
millennial ideas might be the Liberals would embody them 
in Acts of Parliament. I hardly listened to him: I was 
looking into my soul. What was this treachery to myself.^ 
Why had I so genuinely glowed when I pictured the great 
England that would arise, thrilled at the words “ Union 
Jack?” Was I going to be false to my hatred? to my 
revenge? No, no. But, very faintly, something whis- 
pered: 

“ It is March, Lucien Cadoresse. Do you know that 
the violets are shyly clustering on the steep, moist banks 
in rutted English lanes? Do you not remember the 
women with skins of milk? and the young Apollos, their 
brothers, with the delicate mouths and proud, short heads ? 
This is England, calm, gentle-eyed as a heifer, and as 
strong; alien, do you not love her?” 

Ill 

Such was the disaster that befell my hatred, came piling 
on my success in the City, on Stanley’s friendship, on those 
balms for my wounds. At first I refused to acknowledge 
the mysterious process, told myself that I hated England, 
that I would make sport of her customs, butts of her men 
and toys of her women. I fought for my foreign air, 
availed myself of the summer to accentuate the colours 


388 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


of my socks, waistcoats and ties ; I affected affectations 
until affectation seemed to be nature; I tried to be a 
Frenchman because I could not bear to be an English- 
man, to feel the suck of the English morass. I did not 
want to be cold, reserved and dogged, I wanted to be 
ebullient, cynical, gay, outrageous ; I wanted to tell stories 
that were subtly improper rather than coarse; I wanted 
to love and ride away. 

But England turned towards me her courteous face, 
took no notice of my clothes and my airs; she asked me 
to dinner and smiled at my stories; her women returned 
for the aggressive insistence of my glances the beautiful, 
tender gaze of the English maiden. It was the general 
had captured me and made me accept the particular. 

Politics, I think, played the chief part in this new birth, 
and I associate the political emotions of that year with 
the Old Age Pensions Act. Bathos.^ No, that is not 
bathos, for idealism is a god of itself and can live in any 
shrine. I had laughed at the Bill when it was introduced, 
made jokes of the “five bob a week when you’re dead” 
kind; I had spoken in its defence at a couple of open-air 
meetings, rejoicing rather in my contempt for the brief 
I held and in the dexterity with which I parried questions 
than in the merits of my case; I liked to feel master of 
my crowd, to cheat it. When a man called out “ Rot ! ” I 
didn’t want to make him see it wasn’t rot; I preferred to 
say: “The gentleman is a judge of rot,” or “That man 
knows all about rot, he talks it,” or give him some such 
successful, drivelling answer from the electioneering store. 
I wanted to dominate. 

But the summer came and I was stung into fury by the 
attempt of the Lords to kill the Bill; I went to Folkestone, 
returned charmed, my memory haunted by the gracious 
shapes of English girls, by the innoeent gaiety of England 
at play. The Bill became an Act, and I joined in the de- 
light of my party, perhaps because I wanted something 
to delight me, for I was alone. Stanley had gone abroad 


RECONSTRUCTION 


389 


with his wife, my few friends were scattered, I had a little 
time to think. And I found that I was thinking of this 
Act! Absurd, but a sentimental flood carried me away. 
I had visions of millions of old men and women freed at 
last from fear and want; in vain I told myself that the 
age limit was too high, the allowance too low, that the 
reduction of the pension for married couples was mean 
and its maintenance at the full scale for irregular alliances 
funny. I tried to think in detail, and scoff, but I failed: 
I began to think in principle. 

In principle ! Something had happened to my view 
of English politics. Notwithstanding my experiences at 
Hambury, and though I knew that our election was more 
like a game of poker than a St. Georgian contest, I realised 
that English politics had a material basis, were more than 
a mean little private wrangle; I saw that the Liberals, 
unwillingly perhaps, were doing something because Eng- 
land was determined they should do something. Land, 
religious education, control of the liquor trade, democratic 
government, all these were being handled with an air of 
definiteness if not of resolution; the Liberals did intend 
to open up the fallow acres, to make a better country, 
and it did not matter much that they were wrong-headed, 
limited, intolerably prejudiced, for theirs was more than 
a quality of movement: it was action. And those others, 
the Tories whom I abused so gaily, they too had something 
to do. That tariff of theirs, a ridiculous scheme to me 
who was born in a protected country and knew that a 
tariff mattered about as much in daily life as a speed limit 
for motor cars, it was action too. I liked the intensity of 
conviction that fired Mr. Chamberlain when I heard him 
at the Albert Hall, the stress he laid on the fact that 
two and two are four; and the others, the young bloods. 
Brown of Wolverhampton, Lord Algernon Cust, fated to 
die in the last ditch, I enjoyed their enjoyment and upon 
their resolution sharpened my own energy. 

An obstructive veil was drawn away by an unseen hand. 


390 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Politics remained a game, yet a game played, not for love 
as in my own country, but for high stakes. The French 
had not, in my time, done aught save persecute their 
Church, had not tried to do anything else, had endlessly 
called one another names, made and unmade cabinets so 
quickly that not one had been able to realise a plan. Oh, 
talk, talk, perpetual French talk! talk of income-tax, talk 
of civil service reform, talk of industrial assurance, and 
nothing done, nothing save stupid reiteration that the coun- 
try stood by the immortal principles of 1789- 

Revolutionaries! that’s all the French were. They 
could break anything and could make nothing; they were 
noisy drones, and here in England were the sturdy bees 
hiving the honey. Behind the futile marionettes of the 
Palais-Bourbon and of Westminster stood two very 
different peoples: the French occupied with love-making, 
egotist art and private economy; the English, determined 
that the peasant should have land, the workman wages 
and security, the child training. They were building, and 
at the steady glow of their will I lighted the ever-ready 
beacon in my own soul. Almost at once I saw the English 
as I had seen them, saw them better, perhaps, for I was 
rid of stupid, old John Bull and his riding-breeches; I 
saw the English I had dreamed ten years before, the 
English determined to achieve, to make their dreams ma- 
terialise, to establish in every corner of the globe the Pax 
Britannica, to cut roads, build bridges; I saw England 
sending out messenger swarms to conquer the black and 
the yellow, to guide and illuminate with splendid common- 
sense the less steadfast white. 

I was intoxicated. Once more I faced London, and 
the city showed me its soul under its throbbing body, the 
great business of itself. As I walked its interminable 
streets, leagues from east to west, and from north to 
south leagues too, and as I watched from the bridges the 
flow of its liquid history towards the Pool, out towards 
the sea and the world, I knew that I was at the hub of 


RECONSTRUCTION 


391 


the universe, for here was something more than culture, 
than delicacy, than art: it was purpose, it was life. 
I was drunk with life, born again. And as if England 
had planned to reconquer me her skies poured down 
upon me in those August days the droughty heat in which 
I live best. Swollen were the flowers in the parks and 
luxuriant the leaves ; the women of the orgiastic town 
that burst into maturity hung their heavy heads upon their 
slender bodies like peonies over-rich in sap. I flung myself 
upon London as if I wanted to embrace it. 

Of my adventures, common again now, I remember 
one best. Her name was Laura Filton, a tall girl whose 
slim form, when leaning against the warm wind, seemed 
to bend as a blade of grass. Her close, pleated blue dress 
and her peekaboo white blouse hid little of the gracious- 
ness of her; her languid, rose-white neck was wearied by 
the weight of a head laden with light-brown hair, dressed 
high and in a score of curls, of her enormous, flat, black 
hat trimmed with red roses. I had made friends with 
her wire-haired terrier near the Round Pond, and then 
with her; it is six years ago, and her air is archaic, her hat 
and pleats are of the dead, but Laura Filton, idle trades- 
man’s daughter, stands before me now, calm, sedate and 
alluring, with all the grace of England in her long hands. 

She was irremediably stupid, and I remember little of 
her conversation. We had exhausted the habits of her 
dog; she looked at me with calm, blue eyes. 

“ Have you seen the Salome dance ” she asked. 

I had, and suggested its costume must be delightful in 
August. 

She laughed, stated she didn’t fancy it for herself. 

“ I do,” I said boldly. “ Come, dance it now — or be 
a dryad. Here are the trees of the Gardens to shelter 
you.” 

She looked at me as if wondering whether I was serious, 
and the memory has an air of unreality, for about us little 
children play the ancient game of diabolo, and I hear a 


S92 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


nursemaid humming the forgotten ditty^ “ I wouldn’t leave 
my little wooden hut for you.” 

“ You are silly/’ she summed up at last. 

Laura Filton had nothing to say, gave me no mental 
satisfactions, nothing save an ineffectual acceptance of 
caresses she did not desire, and yet I have put her among 
the great in one of the niches of my heart; she had no 
quality, but I gave her the quality of England. The first 
to attract me since my re-enchantment, she figures as the 
dove of peace flying towards me, ambassadress of the women 
of the isles. I think I tried to express to her something 
of the delight that was in me, to tell her that when I 
loved her I loved her people, her splendid, conquering 
people, loved her as the daughter of the pioneers. She 
listened while I ranted of London town and, at last, 
said: 

“ Yes, it’s a fine place, isn’t it? And those new motors, 
the taxis, they’re the latest. Have you been in one of 
them yet? ” 

I laughed, pressed her slender arm, told her that she 
had missed her mark, that these new-fangled carriages 
were French. But I loved her guilelessness, would have 
had her more innocent still, so that she might be yet more 
serene, serene as England the Conquering. 


IV 

To Stanley also I showed my new madness, and he 
smiled. 

"‘At it again ! I thought you’d find out we weren’t so 
had, after all. To tell you the truth I saw it coming 
in March when you took up politics again ; when you began 
abusing my side I knew that in a few months you’d be 
falling in love with your own.” 

“ I’ve fallen in love with both of them.” 

“ Evidently. You never do things by halves. Tell you 


RECONSTRUCTION 


393 


what, Cadoresse, you’ll have no peace until you make an 
end of your ambitions and take out your naturalisation 
papers.” 

I stepped back, stared at this tall, untidy person, who 
seemed to think me funny because I had lost my heart 
to a nation. In that moment Stanley was more repre- 
sentative of his people than ever before; that he was 
articulate while they were dumb did not affect my sense 
of his Englishness, for here he was, saying tremendous 
things and treating them as trifles. Careless of the 
honours piled so heavy upon him by his birth on English 
soil, he stood, leaning against the mantelpiece, shifting 
from one foot to the other. His eyes gleamed wickedly, 
as if he were analysing me, observing the emotions that 
must have been passing over my all-too-expressive coun- 
tenance. This business of being an Englishman, nobody 
knows anything about it except the foreigner. 

I did it. I plunged that very day and, in the evening, 
read my instructions so many times that I ended in know- 
ing some paragraphs by heart; though they thrilled, they 
terrified me a little, for England did not throw herself 
at my head; she wanted to know all about me, all about 
my family, my work and my behaviour; trusting me very 
little, she wanted four Englishmen to affirm in a statutory 
declaration that I was respectable and loyal; and having 
captured me, England hinted that she would never let me 
go but wished me to reside in the United Kingdom. 

For a whole fortnight I struggled with intolerable com- 
plexities. It seemed as difficult to be born again as it is 
to be born actually. I spoiled my memorial on a Saturday 
afternoon and languished, in a state of suspended na- 
tionality, until the Monday. Then I had to find a referee 
who had known me for five years and had to submit with 
as good a grace as I could to a cross-examination by 
Barker, whom I asked out to lunch for the purpose. He 
consented, but put an unfortunate idea into my head: 

** What d’you want to naturalise for, you silly old 


394s THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


josser? You’re chucking your five pounds away, anyhow. 
They won’t have you: not respectable enough.” 

He laughed, and his agreeable face seemed malevolent. 
“ What about that affair of yours ? That was a bit of 
all right, but if it comes out — what oh ! ” 

The idea preyed upon me; long before my papers went 
to the Home Office I realised what a man feels like who is 
“ loitering with intent to steal.” I passed policemen very 
fast and stiffly, expecting one of them to come up to me 
and say: “Hi, you, the Frenchman. What d’you think 
you’re up to trying to become a bloomin’ Briton? What 
about Maud Hooper? And what’s that you said last year 

about the old Queen? And what about ? ” In those 

moods I mentally ran away without listening to those 
other and formidable “ what abouts ? ” for I knew there 
were a great many more, that I had accumulated a good 
deal of disloyalty in the year of disillusion. But I set 
my teeth and decided to go on. 

The chief statutory declaration was made by Barker, 
and others followed from Stanley, Purkis, Cloggie (I mean 
Smith) and Mr. Hoskin. These men shocked me, for they 
did not seem to realise the importance of the affair, except 
Cloggie perhaps, for he delivered a lengthy speech on 
human brotherhood, ending on an inference that England 
was the eldest of the family. But Barker refused to sign 
until he had drunk a “ small port,” the only intoxicant 
he allowed himself as a teetotaler; and old Purkis sent 
me a jocular message to say that he had a new rose which 
he would name the “ Cadoresse Britonii,” while Stanley 
persecuted me with theories as to the intuitive qualities 
of the police. 

A fortnight elapsed. These were anxious moments, for 
a plain-clothes called at my address and told the landlady 
casually that it was “all right at Cambridge Street”: 
that meant the creature was taking his business seriously, 
that he had called at St. Mary’s Terrace too. What had 
Mrs. Hooper said? Perhaps she had laid upon my not 


RECONSTRUCTION 


S95 


altogether guiltless shoulders her daughter’s ruin? But I 
was fervent, I told myself to try to be brave. I was 
idiotic, and yet the whole affair was about as fine as being 
converted. Then, one morning, I found on my breakfast 
tray a notice informing me that my desire was granted me 
and requiring me to take the oath of allegiance. 

The commissioner for oaths behaved very badly. He 
was a very dirty little old man whose office smelled like 
a dust heap; while I read out, Hojy Book in hand, my 
solemn pledge of loyalty to the King, he persistently 
scratched the place where his skull-cap chafed him. While 
I kissed the greasy book he remarked: “Half a crown.” 

It ought to have happened in Westminster Abbey. I 
had a fancy for red velvet, no, for “ imperial ” purple 
or “ royal ” blue — and there ought somewhere to have been 
a lion and a unicorn, and a band to play “ Rule Britannia.” 
... It was as flat as a marriage before the Registrar, 
worse, for the commissioner did not even wish me every 
happiness. 

But while I stood for a moment on the landing, my eyes 
mechanically recording the words on the dirty ochre paint, 
quite unforgettable words: “ Reformed Sewage Disposal 
Co. Ltd.,” my heart was beating fast and I was swollen 
with pride. An Englishman at last — born again. . . . 

I can now guess what a man feels when he has just been 
knighted. 


V 

“ You are becoming intolerable,” said Stanley, good- 
humouredly, a fortnight later. “ Since you wasted five 
pounds you go about as if the place belonged to you ” 

“ I belong to the place,” I said, in a fervid voice. “ Do 
you know, Stanley, it’s true; I can’t keep it to myself 
and it’s funny how little it seems to matter to other 
people.” 

“ One’s affairs never really matter to other people.” 


396 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


“ No — but such affairs ! I told Gladys, you know, the 
red-headed girl at the ‘ Yemen.’ I told her I was a nat- 
uralised Englishman, and all she said was : ‘ Who’d have 
thought it } * ” 

“ I’m not surprised,” said Stanley, “ if you will roll 
several capital R’s in the middle of ‘ naturalise.’ ” 

For several sorrowful moments I reflected that it was 
rather a pity no Pentecostal, naturalising fire could descend 
upon my head. But soon I thought: “Anyhow, I’m in.” 
And then: “After all, you need a jolly good R to say 
* Britannia.’ ” 


CHAPTER III 


THE LAST LAP 
I 

I WALKED quickly along Piccadilly, hugging my heavy 
coat against my body, for a fierce wind blew in my back 
from the east and, at every corner, split itself into eddies 
in which danced dust and pieces of paper. I liked the 
harsh January day, was conscious of my wind-stung face, 
and of the warmth of wool upon my chest. I was alive, 
more alive than a man, alive as a young horse. In the 
sharp air all things seemed unusually definite, made up 
of angles and lines; and every noise was multiplied; clear 
came the ringing of the bells of the modish electrics, the 
trample and bit-champings of the horses, the crashes and 
backfirings of those new-fangled motor-buses. And above 
all I heard the tap-tap of the feet, could distinguish the 
clatter of a pair of little high-heeled boots from the duller, 
regular sound the big soldier in the fur coat was sowing. 
Men and women, all in a hurry, borne by the wind, thou- 
sands of them, millions all round them. And the imperious 
demand for alms of a blind man’s stick. 

I glanced at the shops, the pageantry of ties, the high 
piles of cigarettes framing like minarets the brown girl 
who rolled them, the clustering chocolates, the loud over- 
coats on their dummies, the leather, the gold and silver, 
the perfumes in their bottles, so abundant that I fancied I 
could smell them. 

Then Devonshire House behind its prison gates, and 
the plunge into dandy dom, frock-overcoats and grey-topped 
boots. I stopped to look at the Ritz, which seemed very 

397 


398 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


staring and new, and for a while watched the midday 
tides of traffic surge past it, blotting out the Green Park, 
all save the empty heaven above, which suggested vastness, 
for the gaunt skyscrapers of Westminster were very far 
away. I saw the scene as part of my life, felt strong, 
successful, free; I was making money, making power, 
and this scene would soon be my setting. A rough balance- 
sheet told me that I could depend now, not on two hundred 
and fifty but on five hundred pounds in the coming year. 
Success ! And freedom : here was I, at two o’clock in the 
afternoon, able to walk Piccadilly because such was my 
mood. I had been to see the manager of one of the big 
Atlantic companies in Cockspur Street, the Rudyard or 
the Red Sun, I forget which, and could afford a walk to 
Hyde Park Corner: you do not know how wonderful is 
Piccadilly at two o’clock unless you work in the City from 
ten to six. 

But the icy wind drove me on, past Bath House and up 
the hill, towards the clubs and the growing solitudes. 
I liked to look at the women, little furry animals with 
half-muffled faces, at the men, the ruddy and stout in 
check trousers, the indolent clean-shaven, and those others 
in rather old clothes whose faces showed the sunburn of 
India. All the world was a toy for me, all its people, and 
that short, plump young man who stood lighting a ciga- 
rette, on the steps of a club. 

As I drew near I glanced at him, and at once knew 
him. It was Edward Kent, but I did not want to speak 
to him, I had done with his part of my life; to see him 
made me remember. But Kent did not share this feeling 
of mine. He, too, had recognised me, and now came 
frisking down the steps. As we shook hands I was filled 
with a sense of his absurdity. I could judge him better 
now, understand his irrelevancy in an ordered scheme. His 
jauntiness, his flow of polite platitudes and mild epigrams 
exasperated me. 

It’s ages since I saw you,” he said, blandly. ** Where 


THE LAST LAP 399 

have you been all this time? Making pots of money, 
I suppose, from what I hear.” 

“What have you heard?” I asked. 

But Kent did not answer me, having forgotten his own 
remark. 

“ IVe just been in here for a chop — though sometimes 
I chop and change. I’ve been having lunch with Tortini, 
the musician; I’m thinking of joining his quartette. Of 
course it’ll be rather hard on my golf, not that that’s up 
to much. The other day I went round in ” 

I listened, seemed to listen for many minutes, for Kent 
had a loose abundance of conversation, a taste for elegant 
unreality that maddened his audience. Not only did he 
produce a flood, but he perpetually turned on and then off 
taps marked anything between “ Latest Political Scandal ” 
and “ Socks.” At last I interrupted him, said I must 
hurry on. 

“ Where are you off to? I’m going to Burlington House 
to meet my sister, Mrs. Hugh Lawton, you remember. 
Louisa’s infected me with a taste for sociology.” 

“ Yes,” I said, holding out my hand. 

Kent did not take it, went on speaking. 

“ She and Muriel are great pals. Muriel’s engaged, by 
the way.” 

“ Indeed ? ” I said, my hand still outstretched. 

“ Yes — she’s got hold of quite a decent chap, a sapper. 
Quite mad, of course, and when he marries Muriel he’ll 
go over to the Liberals and be almost complete.” Kent 
laughed at his little witticism, was so pleased with himself 
that I think he hardly realised he spoke his next sentence 
aloud: “ I never thought she’d get married, but I suppose 
it’s catching now that Edith’s as good as accepted that 
fellow Shepstone who’s been dangling round her for a 
year.” 

I knew that I did not blink, that not a muscle of my 
face moved, but I heard my teeth crunch together. I 
remained impassive, almost at attention, while Kent told me 


400 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


the chestnut of the barrister and the pickpocket who *ad a 
bit o’ luck in the Strand. 

Well done, Lucien Cadoresse, England had at last given 
you something of the bulldog. 

II 

When the ship has gone down she does not suck under 
all the little matters she carried; hen-coops, life-belts, 
spars, a litter of domestic furniture float most obviously 
upon the waves. As I sat at home, an hour later, an 
impersonal self wondered why my eyes were so interested 
in trifles, in the row of books and pamphlets upon my 
writing-table, notably the flaring red “ Liberal Year 
Book,” in the polished brass inkstand, the woodcuts of 
old London upon the green distempered wall, and the 
muddy golf-sticks in the corner. But these little things 
are not little except against the broad background of 
life ; when the loves, lusts, hatreds, the ambitions, the 
fears and delights have suddenly been shrouded, then the 
little things become important: for they survive disaster, 
they never die, and sometimes by their permanence they 
link. 

I accomplished a number of mechanical acts in the hours 
that followed; I trimmed my moustache, made many idle 
drawings on my blotter; I sorted my books, all the red 
ones together, all the green ones, and so forth; and I 
sharpened with great steadfastness a whole packet of 
pencils. 

I do not think my mind worked true during those first 
hours; its concentration upon the futile tasks was purely 
automatic, self-protective perhaps, and the hollowness of 
my purpose showed through my business, for I found I had 
at once to find something else to do as soon as I had 
finished with one trifle. While I was idle my brain seemed 
in a state of continuous, nervous whirl, in a condition akin 
to fitful half-sleep, through which there perpetually in- 


THE LAST LAP 


401 


trudes an undefinable but oppressive preoccupation. I 
remember wondering whether I were going mad. 

I expect I was very near it. 

Dusk. I had been sitting for a long time in the arm- 
chair, rather stupefied now, and therefore more content. 
I heard the housemaid come in, put a match to the fire, 
switch on the lights. She asked me whether I wanted tea. 
I said, “ No,” without turning round. Then I listened 
to the fire crackling, got up to tend it, for habit, that 
petrified fruit of instinct, reminded me that the grate 
was ill-built. But as I knelt in front of the flame, coaxing 
it to grow by shuttering it with a newspaper, I found 
that the sound of a human voice and the performance of 
a duty which was not futile had worked some change in 
me, cleared my brain of fumes. The realisation came 
slowly, so slowly that it must have been some time before 
it occupied the whole of me, for I managed to build up 
a good fire without killing it. When I at last walked to 
the window, I knew that I was no longer feeling as an 
animal, but thinking as a man. For a minute or so I 
repeated, “ Edith engaged . . . Edith engaged ...” I 
paused, then said it again with an air of finality. I did 
not stop to analyse the relation Kent had implied, to 
wonder whether she was actually engaged. I accepted 
the fact. Then I asked myself what it meant to me. At 
first it meant nothing at all, nothing more than Muriel’s 
engagement or any one of the eight hundred and seventy- 
four engagements which came about in the United Kingdom 
every day. 

I smiled at my own statistics and, for a while, found 
satisfaction in my consciousness. But I was not yet all 
conscious, for instinct took me to the writing-table, made 
me unlock the drawer in which I kept Edith’s letters ; there 
were about thirty there, the first of all written just before 
the Hambury election, the last, an appointment on a half 
sheet; there were two picture postcards from Fowey; I 
found also a programme headed “ Empress Rooms,” on 


402 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


which my initials figured seven times, the menu of Ma- 
homed’s Hindu restaurant with an intricate pattern of 
E.L.’s on the back. No photograph, not a lock of hair, or 
a fan, or a ribbon. Nothing but these letters, and yet — 
I had kept the meanest of them, the most formal, the 
unsigned commands to be at a given time at some Under- 
ground station. I had kept everything. 

I flung myself back in my chair, my hands on the papers, 
and knew that I was sane after all, for here was aching 
regret shot with flashes of agony. I bent forward, ordered 
the letters as well as I could, began to read them. The 
first one, its childish round writing and underlined words, 
yes, here was Edith, slim, outlined against the sea, her 
fair hair streaming on the wind. Some appointments to 
meet at Hambury — in ward four — and I thought of the 
young Liberals, of Chike, the progressive grocer, of Edith 
when the hood fell from her head. . . . 

A pain I had never known before went right through 
me as I remembered the falling of the hood, the fair head 
pillowed on my shoulder. . . . 

I read all the other letters, some more appointments, a 
picture postcard saying that the weather was lovely at 
Fowey, and that they were going by boat to Land’s End; 
a long letter, too, very tender and very shy: 

“ . . . But how can I write what you ask? I am 
not like you, I am afraid to say what I think, it all 
seems so strange and so wonderful that you should 
care for me at all. That is why I can’t tell you 
how much I love you; I seem cold, I know, but 
I’m not, I’m not. Oh, my darling. . . .” 

I closed my eyes, gripping the letter. ** Go on,” said 
instinct. 


. . you must know that I love you, that I’ve 
never loved any one else. I couldn’t, and I’ll 


THE LAST LAP 


403 


always love you, always, always, whatever you do. 

I’ll always love you. . . 

I read to the end, mastering the grief that rose in me, 
thinking to dominate it, to succeed in being a man. But 
I was not prepared for the last line; she had signed 
“Edith,” and, as a postscript, written: “Is this a good 
letter ? ” 

The manliness went out of me. Edith, tender, devoted, 
but shy, had broken down her reserve, had forced herself 
to write a love-letter because I demanded one, and when 
it was written had suddenly asked for appreciation, for 
praise, as a child begs for full marks. She had given me 
all she could give, then raised towards me the blushing 
flower of her face that she might read thankfulness in 
mine. 

A bitter shame was in me while I wept, uncontrollably, 
endlessly wept; hands clasped over my eyes I felt myself 
shaking all over; for a long time mine were terrible, dry 
sobs, sobs that tore at my throat, pulled and jerked my 
shoulders ... it was later only the tears came, and then 
they were wrenched from my eyes . . . and later again 
they flowed silently, painlessly, until I sank face down 
against the table and found that everything about me was 
growing dim, receding. With every minute exhaustion 
gained upon me. I was vaguely conscious of the growing 
cold as night came and the fire went down, of a torpor 
seizing me, pressing down upon me. I slept. 

I woke up to hear the clock strike four. I rose to my 
feet and found that I staggered as I walked about the 
room, but soon my cramped limbs recovered, though I 
shivered with cold. I went to the sideboard, poured out 
a third of a tumbler of whisky and swallowed the stuff in 
two gulps. Then, as I sat by the side of the cold grate, 
I felt better, stronger; and I was peculiarly lucid, as if 
the exhaustion of my body had freed my brain. Indeed, 


404 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


I hardly felt my body, I had the sensation of severed 
limbs that is gained from several doses of absinthe. 

For a long time I thought, and it seemed as if some 
obscure mental process had taken place within me while 
I slept, as if I had gone on thinking during those hours of 
torpor. This I knew because I did not awake to weak 
misery : I awoke in reaction, physically exhausted, but 
mentally calm. I recapitulated the points of the case, 
told myself without any passion that I loved Edith, had 
always loved her, must have her. I did not doubt that 
she still loved me, that she was preparing to marry the 
other man only because I had forsaken her. . . . 

Yes, I had forsaken her. I had not understood her, 
given her time. For some minutes I bitterly reviled my 
own impatience, my intolerance, my sensitiveness, my 
precipitancy; I had brutally asked her to choose between 
her father and myself, and had not given her many minutes 
to make up her mind; unmoved, I had seen her tears flow; 
I had tried to bully her, I had sacrificed her on the altar 
of my self-importance; I had trampled on her sense of 
duty, sneered at her delicacy, despised her scruples; I had 
seized a butterfly and broken it upon a wheel. . . . 

“ Brute . . . brute . . . fool ...” I whispered. 

And I found intense pleasure in this vilification of myself. 
While I once had seen no side other than my own, I now 
saw mine no longer; I hated myself and enjoyed the pun- 
ishment, as if I were split into judge and criminal, so that 
one part of me could rejoice in the retribution which over- 
took the other. Testimony of my love, also, I delighted 
in my abasement, for the true lover has no pride, but 
cries out to his beloved: “ Oh, most beautiful, oh, priceless 
one, deign only not to avert your eyes. ... I am worth- 
less, soiled, despicable . . . there is no good in me save 
that I love you. So put your heel upon my neck, beloved, 
and tread, tread hard. . . . Ah, that pain is sweet, the 
pain you give. . . .” 

Soon I saw my life as it was, a life of hard, perpetual 


THE LAST LAP 


405 


contest. I had struggled to become an Englishman, strug- 
gled to become a free, rich man, now I must struggle 
to win my woman. Oh, it was struggling did it after all, 
ceaseless toil, endless resource, unflagging, dogged energy. 
To try, to be beaten, to try again, that was life, after all. 
And a fine thing of its kind, adventurous because you 
could never tell which way the contest would end, bracing 
because you had to take the blows and come on for more, 
and come on again, and again, and still come on, until the 
enemy got tired of hitting, and then you won. . . . 

The whisky in my body and the fierce metaphors in my 
brain inflamed me, evoked in me a response, made me grit 
my teeth together and clench my fists. They thought they 
had beaten me, did they? They thought they could keep 
me out, keep me down. . . . We should see. Edith loved 
me still, had always loved me, and I’d have her, have her 
if I had to kidnap her. In that hour I was strong, much 
more than inflamed; I swore that nothing should keep me 
from her, that I would call her back, and if, hardly 
possible to conceive, she loved me no more, win her a 
second time. 

As I sat alone in the icy room, waiting for the dawn, 
much that is my soul stood forth: a conviction that life 
has no virtue save in its battles, that it is a poor thing at 
best, and that all its colour and its dignity come out of 
contest. 

Life is in us only when we fight; fighting makes life 
splendid, and if we cease to fight we begin to die. 

Life is like a tree: when growth is arrested decay 
begins. 

I stood at the window. In the greyness the houses 
opposite seemed ghostly and unfamiliar. Then day began 
to dawn in the east. 

There are no good causes and no bad causes. There are 
only the causes that win. There is no dignity in endeavour, 
but only in victory. 

Defeat is naught save the prelude to victory. 


406 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


The dawn touched the roofs with rose and, fervently, I 
repeated : 

Defeat is naught save the prelude to victory. 


Ill 

With extreme care I made ready for the struggle. My 
face was livid and there were purplish blotches under my 
eyes, but my black hair lay very sleek, and my hand, 
nerved by my purpose, had not shaken while I shaved. 
Resolutely, too, I ate, though my furred tongue revolted 
from food and I wished only to empty the teapot: I was 
going to want my strength. 

I stood at the corner of Lancaster Gate, watching from 
a convenient point, and the old excitement rose in me. 
I recognised the maid. Fiona, older, slower and fatter, 
came trundling down the steps to snuff critically in the 
gutter. The little dog gave me my first powerful emotion; 
Fiona, waddling cautiously down the steps instead of 
clearing them at a bound, four paws outstretched, as the 
hound of Artemis, was a horribly eloquent evidence of 
passing time. I had left her young, and now, after little 
more than two years, she was old. For some seconds my 
throat contracted as I wondered whether Edith, too, had 
grown old. At half-past nine Mr. Lawton came out, walked 
away towards the Tube station. Still I waited. She was 
coming: I knew it. 


IV 

For some minutes I walked behind her; though my 
heart beat so fast that I thought I must stifle, I was still 
sybarite enough to want to look at her before I spoke. 
I had not seen her very well as she appeared, for she had 
turned sharply to the left and I had followed; I had had 
time only to see her hair blaze vivid in the sunshine, and 


THE LAST LAP 


407 


now, as I cautiously suited my pace to hers, I found her 
unexpectedly the same. She walked as quickly, as 
springily as ever, and gaily she shook her little bag at 
Fiona in the hope of making her leap at it. But Fiona 
was old, and peacefully trotted. 

If I saw no more than this it was, no doubt, because of 
the tumult within me. I was overcome by unexpected 
realisations, subtle convictions of needs and, oddly grafted 
thereon, a lust for conquest; I enjoyed this careful fol- 
lowing, was more than the \vild beast tracking its food, 
was also the sportsman enjoying the chase. But mixed 
with this feeling that must arise in any man that pursues 
any woman, after the manner of the male, was a tran- 
scendent, swoon-approaching joy, a sense of fulfilment; she 
did not see me, but I saw her; I trod in her footprints, 
and I had a feeling that was literally sensuous when my 
foot crumpled a scrap of paper which hers had touched. 

Cautiously I followed across the Bayswater Road, 
through the postern and into the Gardens. With her I 
abandoned the path for the lawns, treading warily lest 
the frosted grass should criss under my feet. The wind 
had fallen, and now the pale sun threw upon the ground 
the fine shadow-tracery of the branches: as she passed 
under a tree the thin reflections fell across her, patterning 
her with light grey lines. Suddenly she stopped, seemed 
to gaze at the Speke obelisk, and I knew that my hour had 
come, for we were almost alone; far away some nurse- 
maids wheeled perambulators along a path, and a few 
little dark-clad men hurried towards the railway stations 
and their business. I heard the faint crackling of the 
bare twigs, the distant whistle of a park-keeper. And 
then I shrank, for I was so full of happiness, of redis- 
covery, that I wondered whether I had not better be content 
and turn away. I was as the Oriental sage bidden add 
to a bowl already full of water. ... 

The sage, I knew, added a rose-leaf. But I shrank, 
I shrank; I was afraid. In spite of my aching desire to 


408 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


see her face, I feared what I might see in it. ... I half 
turned. But it was too late: Fiona, slowly trotting in 
circles, muzzle upon the ground, drew near me in her 
course, stopped, looked at me. She stared at me, and I 
wondered whether she hypnotised me, for we did not move, 
either of us, but gazed into each other’s eyes. I saw 
something struggling in the beautiful brown depths, recog- 
nition, doubt; Fiona knew me, was desperately trying to 
remember where she had seen me, wanted to remember. 

I saw the effort of her little brain. 

Then a change came over her. She cocked her ears, 
opened her mouth a little, so as to show her pink tongue 
moving in slight excitement over her white teeth. And 
very, very slowly, she came towards me, gazing at me 
still, her tail agitated by a nervous quiver. She came 
quite close, looked up at me, and suddenly lay upon her 
side, a front paw raised, her tail now beating sharply upon 
the ground. . . . 

I heard Edith cry out: “Fiona! Fiona!” saw her flit 
towards me. 

Then, quite unaccountably, I was looking at her and 
she, one hand upon her breast, was meeting my eyes with 
hers. 

I do not know how long it lasted. 

In those moments I saw her collectively, as an object 
devoid of details. Through the immediate sense of my 
delight ran a streak of terror, and even in that clasp of 
gazes I felt the impulse to fly. But the film dissolved 
and, suddenly, I saw Edith. 

At first I thought her unchanged. Then I observed 
subtle differences, hair dressed lower than before, a 
roundness of figure new to me, a suggestion of woman. 
But the blue eyes that held mine were the same, filled 
with wonder, some fear, some delight perhaps, as I had 
so often seen them, and, dark in the pallor of her face, 
they suddenly reassured me, told me that here was the 
everlasting woman before me that defied the impermanence 


THE LAST LAP 409 

of the flesh. I took a quick step forward, holding out 
both hands. 

“ Edith/’ I said, hoarsely. 

Swiftly her rigid features relaxed. A heavy blush 
stained her face to the forehead, and I saw her lips 
tremble and twitch. Something that was hidden away 
in me responded to those tremulous lips. I came quite 
close, gripped both her hands. 

“ Edith,” I said again, so hoarsely that the word came 
in a whisper. 

She did not withdraw her hands, stood facing me, her 
eyes meeting mine; but the continuous quivering of her 
hands told me that she too would gladly escape me, that 
it was in spite of her disquiet her eyes were able to meet 
mine. Our eyes linked us: we couldn’t get away. . . . 

With this knowledge came a thrill of delight: Edith 
joyous, Edith crying out my name might have pleased 
me, but Edith powerless to free her hands from mine, to 
lower her lids under a gaze which I knew must be hungry, 
aroused in me all the savagery of the conqueror and the 
inexpressible emotions of triumph. . . . 

“ Mine, mine, mine,” I thought, and my love seemed to 
increase with every repetition. What was this idea of 
winning her back.^ I had never lost her. And — 
“ Hers, hers, hers,” shouted another voice ; I, too, knew 
that I could not withdraw my hands, avert my eyes. . . . 
She had never lost me. . . . 

I found I was walking with her across the grass, still 
holding her hands. We sat down on chairs that faced 
the polished black water of the Serpentine at the bottom 
of the slope, and as I leant forward I thought I had little 
to say. 

“ Edith . . . my darling . . . my beloved ... I never 
thought I’d see you again.” 

She did not reply, but looked towards the ground. 
Then: 

It had to come ... in London . . . accidents. . . .” 


410 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


This is not an accident” I said. “ I followed you.” 

She threw me a quick glance full of inquiry. 

“ I followed you/’ I said, in a low voice. “ I had to 
see you again, to tell you . . . because . . . oh, Edith, 
what’s the good of talking, my dear, my dear? ... I 
want you, I want you. . . 

Her look was startled. Her mouth contracted; furrows 
appeared between her eyebrows. 

“ Lucien,” she faltered. 

“ Ah,” I cried out, all afire with the tenderness of her 
voice, “ you still love me, you still love me. I’ve been a 
brute, a fool, murdered your happiness and mine, and 
you love me, you love me. . . . Say you love me, say 
you’ve forgiven, forgotten . . . say you love me, do you 
hear? ” 

Savagely I crushed her hands, leant towards her so 
close that I could feel her rapid breath upon my face, see 
all the gradations of colour in her distended pupils. I 
could feel a ring through my gloves and rejoiced to think 
that I was grinding it into her fingers. 

“ Say you love me,” I repeated, in a still harsher voice. 
“ I’ve never forgotten you, I’ve never loved any other 
woman, I’ve never ceased to love you. I went away 
from you with all my pride torn and with all my heart 
bloody. I didn’t understand, I wouldn’t understand . . . 
but yesterday I heard something that made me under- 
stand that I couldn’t give you up, that I couldn’t let you 
go, that I’m all — poisoned with you.” I stopped, wonder- 
ing why I had said “ poisoned,” then hurried on. “ I 
heard there was another man. ... Is it true? ” 

She hesitated, then, with a brave lift of her head: 

“ No.” 

“ There could be no other man after me ? ” 

A long hesitation. A bold meeting of my eyes. 

“ There could be no other man after you.” 

“ You will . . about to say “ marry,” my tongue took 
a quick, wise turn let me go to your father ? ” 


THE LAST LAP 


411 


“ Yes/’ 

“I love you. Do you love me?” 

“ I love you.” 

We did not think of considering whether we were 
watched. Together, I think, we bent forward . . . and 
her light hair was in my eyes, my mouth upon her mouth. 


V 

We did not seem to have to explain. In very few 
sentences I seemed to tell Edith facts that we both of 
us knew to be unnecessary. I told her that after losing 
her I had passed through hell, faced loneliness, privation, 
endless labour, and the everlasting need of her; I told 
her that my business was flourishing, that I could marry 
her at once. 

“What does it matter?” she asked. “Isn’t it enough 
that you have come back, that I said I would take you 
if you came ? I knew I would when . . . oh ! Lucien, how 
often I have cried ” 

“ My darling, my darling, forgive ” 

“ Oh, no, no.” She laughed, and there was a shrillness 
of excitement in her voice. “ Don’t say that. What is 
there to forgive now that you’ve come back — still love 
me ? ” 

“ Shepstone,” I whispered. 

Her face reddened, and she half turned away. But 
again she faced me bravely. 

“ I must tell you the truth. Mr. Shepstone asked me 
to be his wife. He — he says he is in love with me, and I 
like him; I said I would answer him later. Oh, it was 
so lonely. . . .” 

“ My dear, I know, I too.” 

“. . . So lonely. And I couldn’t believe you’d come 
back to me. I knew we should meet again, but I thought 
we would be strangers. Or friends, much later, when we 


412 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


were old. Mr. Shepstone asked me so often . . . and 
they said that you . . . that an aetress ’* 

“Ah.? you heard that? It’s true. I was mad when 
I lost you. I was ready for anything, anybody. I’ve 
lived — abominably. I’m a beast, I’m low ” 

“ No, no ” 

“ Yes,” I cried, as if anxious to enhance my triumph 
by self-abasement; “low, despicable — not fit to be touched 
by you.” 

“ It’s all over,” Edith murmured. “ What do I care 
what you were ? ” 

I knew that she would not understand, but how splendid 
was this disdain of the past. As she spoke the future 
expanded, panoramic. 

“ You never forgot me,” I whispered. 

She smiled. “ Never. I could not. I wanted to, 
but . . .” 

She freed her hands, suddenly pulled at a little gold 
chain, drew a locket from her breast, opened it. In it 
lay half-a-dozen crumpled white petals. 

As I bent to smell their faded scent, in which was a 
hint of suMe leather; she whispered: 

“ The first thing you gave me, Lucien — from the almond 
tree — you remember? ” 


VI 

Little Dresden Shepherdess, your eyes are pure as the 
mountain torrent; your hair is golden as honey, you lean 
light as thistle-down against the wind. Sweet one and 
brave, who have no reproach for me, naught save gladness, 
who will raise me, the iniquitous, the soiled from the 
ground on which I throw myself abased, sweet one and 
brave, forget my sin against the love you gave me for me 
to cast away, destroy the foulness of sense and self-seeking 
that has made me hideous, in the fierce, white flame of 


THE LAST LAP 


413 


your purity; with you, lift me from grossness into that 
region of innocence where you dwell, and let me dwell 
there with you. Take my heart between your slim white 
hands, sweet one and brave, and hold it close to the 
warmth of yours. 


VII 

I pause awhile before these terminations, so suddenly 
do they come, and unlinked with the dragging length 
of my older life. There is no detail in them, they come 
too swiftly; as white squalls they overwhelm me. I feel 
that there should be gradations in their crises, forebodings, 
then prolonged struggles, hopes deferred, marches and 
countermarches ; one ought not to win or lose a woman 
so simply; much time should elapse and there should be 
much skilful play of wits. To stand, as we did, starkly 
in front of each other, to avoid explanation, shirk apology 
and absolution, it was — inartistic. 

But then I was sincere, and there was no time for the 
artistic dallyings to which I am given when sincerity is 
not there and I call upon its wraith. Life is not artistic: 
its big adventures appear as you reach some appointed 
spot, and they rush upon you as dragons that have been 
lying in ambush, compelling you to fight, and at once, 
lest you be destroyed. There are no slow adventures, 
slow victories, slow defeats worthy of the name of adven- 
ture: the deliberate is the dull, and no forlorn hope ever 
lagged as it made for its goal. 

Thus, and I remembered it as I decided once more to 
try a throw with fortune, I had lost Edith within four 
hours. At eight o’clock I had held her in my arms, 
pressed secure kisses upon her lips. By midnight I had 
closed in fierce contest with her brother and her father, 
with her family, with English society and tradition, with 
the whole phalanx of England, close-packed and ready to 
receive the intruder upon its pikes. ... I had lost her in 


414 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


four hours, and now I was going to win her in ten 
minutes. 

I entered the dining-room at half-past nine, as well- 
groomed as I could be, assured that my shirt-front shone 
as brilliantly as any English shirt-front, that my hair was 
ruly and my jewellery almost invisible; also I was ready 
for Mr. Lawton, a little surprised at having been admitted 
into the house, and vaguely suspicious that I had been 
admitted only to be insulted. The maid went up to the 
drawing-room to hand her master my card, for I had 
refused to go upstairs, as I wanted a private interview, 
and did not fancy a sensational irruption among the 
assembled Lawtons; I rehearsed the scene that was going 
to take place. 

Mr. Lawton would glare at me ; he would say : “ What 
do you want.^ ” I would say: “Your daughter."’ He 
would tell me to leave the house, and I would reply: 
“ No, not until I have had my say.” Then, while he 
ostentatiously turned aside to examine that most excellent 
oil-painting on that most sumptuous red wall-paper, I 
would state the position, in Saxon English flavoured with 
idioms which would show I was an Englishman, and with 
’Varsity slang that would prove me a gentleman. I would 
make him see that Edith was mine until death us do part 
(slight Adelphi excursion), that I was doing well, and 
that I would never, never give in (let loose the English 
bulldog). At last he would ungraciously give his consent, 
and in a sporting manner I would hold out my hand. 
Perhaps my beaten enemy 

“ Hullo, Cadoresse ! I’m very glad to see you. What 
have you been doing all this time? ” 

Ridiculous! Here was Mr. Lawton smiling at me, with 
a friendly look in his blue eyes, and he was actually 
holding out his hand. I felt he was not playing the game, 
playing it as a French father would have, but I took his 
hand, muttering that the creation of a young business 

“ Oh, yes, I understand,” said Mr. Lawton. “ I hear 


THE LAST LAP 


415 


you’re doing very well^, that you’re going to be much bigger 
than poor old Barbezan by-and-by.” 

I had to smile, to protest we intended no harm to the 
old firm; his interest in my affairs was frank: he asked 
no questions, but received with evident satisfaction the 
confidences I felt compelled to make. I struggled, but I 
gave way under the pressure of his unobtrusive courtesy. 
We seemed to talk about business, endlessly. Several 
times I tried to close with him by alluding to his family, 
as a beginning, but he interrupted me. That was some- 
thing, in the land of “ Thou shalt not interrupt.” 

“My wife is very well; you must come upstairs and 
see her. They’ll all be glad to see you.” 

I ventured to ask whether Muriel ... It seemed that 
Muriel, too, would be charmed. ... I opened my mouth 
to introduce Edith into the conversation 

“ You must have a drink,” said Mr. Lawton, amiably. 

I did not want a drink, I wanted to get to my work, but 
I accepted, for Englishmen are always drinking whisky 
and soda: one has to live up to one’s naturalisation papers. 
Mr. Lawton poured out the whisky, asked to be told 
“ when,” and while he manmuvred the syphon, managed 
to make me tell him that I had taken up politics again, 
and promise to come and hear him speak on the Budget 
later in the year. But my opportunity arrived; we both 
stood glass in hand and, as Mr. Lawton touched the liquid 
with his lips, I was upon him. As I spoke I was amused, 
for I could see his nose through the glass that muzzled 
him. 

“ Mr. Lawton,” I said, quickly, “ I’ve come to ask you 
for your consent to my marriage with your daughter 
Edith.” 

No tell-tale expression crossed his face as he put down 
the glass. Indeed, his voice was almost cordial as he 
replied : 

“ My dear fellow, we discussed that two years ago. 
You know what I said.” 


416 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Yes, but things have changed. I am getting on ** 

“ It’s not that, you know that perfectly well.” 

“ It makes a difference.” 

“ No, Cadoresse, you know that had nothing to do with 
my refusal.” 

A stream of rhetoric burst from my lips. I begged him 
to consider that time was passing, that we loved each 
other, that his objections had once been well-founded, but 
that I had become a naturalised Englishman, had acquired 
the habits, the standards of an Englishman. 

” Now don’t I behave like an Englishman? ” I asked. 

“ You’ve become more English, but you’re not Eng- 
lish.” 

I went over the whole field, asked him to acknowledge 
that my hair was short, that my clothes were perfectly 
unobtrusive ; begged to be told whether I was noisy, 
boastful ” 

” You boast about nothing except being an English- 
man,” said Mr. Lawton, slyly; “and yet you’re a French- 
man, a Roman Catholic, to the bone.” 

I went off on the religious question, and we had quite 
a spirited little wrangle on the difference between French 
and English Roman Catholics when they happened also to 
be agnostics. Then I brought the argument back to its 
base, and a heavy despair began to stifle me as I realised 
that this man had made up his mind in the English, 
bullish way, that nothing would move him: I don’t know 
why an Englishman never moves; perhaps he can’t. 

At last we faced each other, Lawton calm, and I rather 
breathless. There was a moment of silence, and I won- 
dered whether Edith would stand by me if I threatened 
him; she had promised nothing, had merely agreed to my 
once more going to her father; all I could do was to hope 
that she would help to carry out my threat. 

“ So you refuse to let me marry her ? ” I said, harshly. 

Mr. Lawton looked at me with an air of amazement. 

“ Refuse? You need not ask for my consent.” 


THE LAST LAP 417 

** But — but ” I protested, and I was angry as well 

as bewildered by this change of front. 

“ I have no consent to give.” And as I stared he went 
on: 

“ Two years ago, or is it two and a half } you came here 
and asked for my leave to marry Edith. I refused, be- 
cause it was my duty to refuse. Edith was under age, 
and I had to protect her. Now she is twenty -two, she 
will be twenty-three in April; the position has changed. 
I no longer come in. She must decide for herself.” 

“ Mr. Lawton,” I cried, suddenly thrilled, my tongue 
thick in my mouth with excitement. 

He raised his open hand, and it was the first time I had 
ever seen him do anything so histrionic: 

“ She is free. I neither consent nor refuse. She has 
her freedom and she has her responsibility. I will not 
interfere, for — it is not my business.” 

Understanding irradiated my mind. Here was the Eng- 
lishman, the beau ideal of his type: his daughter was of 
age, was free, free to be happy and free to be wretched; 
the fate of other free individuals was not his business. 
And I wondered whether I loved this sumptuous English 
freedom or hated its cold aloofness. 

“ Thank you,” I said, unconsciously imitating his 
attitude. 

He did not reply, but as I turned towards the door, the 
sportsman said, detachedly: 

“Don’t go yet. Come upstairs and see them; my wife 
would be sorry to miss you.” 


CHAPTER IV 


AN Englishman’s home 
I 

Life has described a circle, as a preliminary, no doubt, 
to describing another; I sit at my knee-hole desk, consider 
my regulation silk hat, then gaze awhile through the 
window into the misty depths of the trees. Idly I watch 
the traffic in Kensington Gore, motor-cars speeding towards 
Richmond, Surrey, perhaps the West Country, ponderous 
motor-buses advertising English soaps, plays, oats; and 
horses swiftly drawing the broughams of Englishwomen 
to Dover or Grafton Street. This is England, wealthy, 
easy England. And there is the immense policeman at 
the gate of the Gardens; near him are two blues from 
Knightsbridge, who flirt with nursemaids in hospital garb. 
Handsome, well-groomed men, dainty children, women 
whose clothes are six months behind the Paris fashion, 
pedigree terriers — England. 

And in this room, my study, are Morlands on the brown 
paper; in the bookcase I read the names of the bigger 
books: Macaulay’s History of England, the Life of 
Disraeli, a massive volume on the Pre-Raphaelites; I 
recognise the novels of Fielding and Thackeray, Boswell’s 
Life of Johnson; and a playwright’s corner, Beaumont 
and Fletcher, Sheridan; there are no French yellow-backs. 
On a bracket my well-beloved collection of Lowestoft china ; 
on the mantelpiece Liverpool transfer. Comfortable chairs 
are covered with green-leaved black chintz; a pipe-rack 
hangs over my piled golf-clubs. The Times has fallen 
on the floor, littering the hearthrug, and John, the bulldog, 
sleeps with his enormous head pillowed on the loose sheets; 

418 


AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOME 


419 


he snores, and as he sleeps he chokes and gurgles. He is 
disgusting, he is delightful. This is England. 

I have not been to the City to-day, but shall drop in 
for an hour at four o’clock, when I shall have finished 
these memoirs. I must finish them, perhaps to begin them 
over again one day, for I have not had the strength or the 
wish to extend them over the last five years. Of those 
years I say nothing now; perhaps I have nothing to say, 
perhaps I feel obscurely that my alien life ended one 
morning, when Edith and I faced each other across the 
little body of Fiona as she squirmed in the rough grass. 
Yes, everything conspires to give me that message. On 
the stairs I hear voices raised in shrill protest; I hear 
Marmaduke clamouring for sweeties and tiny Edna utter- 
ing, for reasons unknown to me, scream after scream. Then 
Edith’s voice, very low, very sweet. I wonder why I called 
those two “ Marmaduke ” and “ Edna.” Oh, yes, I re- 
member: there are no corresponding French names. 


II 

Before me lies a blue paper. Addressed to Lucien 
Cadoresse, of 200 Kensington Gore, it states that “ By 
virtue of a Precept of the High Sheriff of the County 
aforesaid,” I am summoned to appear before His Majesty’s 
Justice or Justices assigned to hold the Assizes, there to 
serve as a Special Juror. Can it be that the recreant 
English-born say “ Damn ” when they find such a blue 
paper in the post? It is amazing to me who am thrilled 
by this little thing I may do for my country. With eleven 
other Englishmen I am to decide the fate of Englishmen 
in the stern, but lofty presence of England’s law. 

Soft-footed, ghost-like, the parlourmaid comes in with 
the message that Mrs. Cadoresse would like to have the 
car later on if I don’t want it. I nod. No Frenchified 
familiarities, discussions or pleasantries pass between me 


420 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


and my servant; I don’t look at her, I am not sure that I 
would know her in the street. Yes, I am an Englishman. 

Ill 

But what of these English, then? Can they be under- 
stood of me at all? or only felt? Ten years have gone, 
and I seem to see the English only in flashes, as if some 
psychic stage-manager made them leap across the stage, 
leap so fast that my mental eye could gather of them 
nothing but a post-impression. 

They leap, the English, all different, all alike; each one 
has his passion or his equally amazing lack of passion, and 
yet each one is somehow brother to his fellow. Let me 
close my eyes, look at you one by one, as if you were 
bacteria wriggling under a lens. 

Here is Hugh Lawton, my brother-in-law. You play 
a good hand at bridge, but you are not too good to be 
mistaken for a sharper; your golf handicap is six: you 
will never be a plus man ; you do not belong to the 
Athenaeum, nor to an obscure club in a back yard of St. 
James’s. You are a fair average. You have married a 
pretty woman, not a beauty, and, of course, you have 
three children : it would be impossible to imagine you 
with either none or fourteen. You are a moderate Liberal 
— did you ever dream of Empire or of Socialism, once upon 
a time? And now that you have told me so much, tell 
me what is your passion. What! you don’t know. No, 
I don’t suppose you do: Hugh, you are not alive, you are 
merely there — and yet you have life as has that queei 
little animal which lives at the bottom of the sea, alive on 
its mineral stalk. You are for the Broad Church, the 
constitutional State, the “ good ” novels, the vote for women 
householders; you maintain, and some things you tolerate 
— you will tolerate the intolerable when it is established. 
For you are an Englishman: you want to be neither too 
unhappy, for that is unpleasant, nor too happy, for that 


AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOME 


421 


is sinful; you want to earn enough money, play your 
games, peacefully love your wife, educate your children 
as' yourself, work just hard enough to want to play just 
hard enough and to sleep well, not too heavily, until you 
surrender your soul for the eternal rest. 

You are in the middle; you are not among the very 
good, not among the very bad ; you and your million 
brothers, you are always in the middle, and England — 
is it because England is always in the middle that England 
is the centre of the world? 

Yet, all of you, you are not like that. Here is Edward 
Kent, an elegant figure, a Regency wit in a morning coat. 
Are you England ? or only donnish Cambridge ? What 
are these affectations of yours ? What makes you say 
“ What race ? ” when, on the greatest occasion of the year, 
some girl decked out in light or dark blue ribbons tells 
you that it’s a fine day for the race? Kent, your revolt 
against England is allegiance to England; your French 
novels, your unashamed desire to shine in public, your 
trim hands, your dislike of sport, all these are revolts you 
are trying to engineer against the England that has got 
you, that will never loose you, that will force you to do 
the decent thing on a battlefield if you are dragged there, 
or in the Divorce Court, if you get so far. I do not think 
you will ever get into Court, for you will never want any 
woman badly enough to suffer because you take her. 
Love cannot touch you; like birth and religion it is not 
the kind of thing a gentleman should meddle with, for it 
involves complications, you know, the problem-play com- 
plications, which are so sordid, unnecessary, so unpleasant, 
as you say. Luxurious Kent, you would ring for your 
pyjamas in Portland gaol, but you wouldn’t be luxurious 
if you were not trying not to be coarse — English. 

Others, Mr. Lawton, Under-Secretary of State, impossi- 
ble to corrupt (save perhaps with a peerage by-and-by) ; 
Colonel Raleigh, soldier, who believes in efficiency and 
making Lord Kitchener Governor of every British Colony. 


422 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


Gallant Colonel, you made Yorkshire smile last year when 
you, a Justice of the Peace, were caught in a quiet assembly 
where cocks were .fighting a main. . . . Dicky Bell. ... I 
like your round face, your short nose and bright eyes, your 
devotion to the little slum boys whom you still drill. You 
have some ideas of education. Games and classics, you 
say, have gone too far in our country, but you’re not going 
to do away with them. And many more, the acute and 
the dull, Stanley, Neville, pretty Muriel and her sapper, 
Farr the abominable, old Purkis, the young Liberals of 
Hambury, Mrs. Lawton, enjoying a quiet life between an 
at home, a dinner and the supper that follows on the play, 
the eighty-seven clerks of Stanley, Cadoresse & Co., and 
all the others whose nameless faces crowd round me, what 
are you doing 

Living. That is enough. Asking no more. Just want- 
ing to keep the blinds down so that life may be decently 
obscured. 

England is busily engaged in not pulling the blinds up. 

Living cleanly, without worrying about what will happen 
next. You’d die well, most of you, if it came to that: it’s 
a good deal. 

I love you, oh, not blindly as in Edwardian days. I 
know you’re not so nimble as the French, and that you 
enjoy shooting ideas as much as you enjoy shooting grouse. 
But I love your calmness in the presence of life; I love 
your neutrality, your unobtrusive courage, your economy 
of emotion, and the immense, sane generosity of you. To 
the stranger within your gates you give bread, and you 
give him your kindly heart too. Only the stranger makes 
you shy if he lets you see that he knows that. You are 
the dignity, the solidity of the world. The French are 
its passion, you are its reason; you are the bearers of 
restfulness. 

Englishmen, when I want to think of you all together 
I think of Falstaff. You have lost most of his gaiety, 
you no longer dance round the maypole of Merrie England; 


AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOME 


423 


oppressed by cares and expenditures you stand aloof from 
democracy and no longer respect aristocracy ; your rich 
men cannot sit in the banqueting-hall where he rioted, 
for it is tumbling about their ears. But the root of you 
is Falstaffian: the poetic idealism of the Fat Knight still 
flowers in your sons, his philosophic acceptance of good 
and evil radiates out from the midst of you. The broad 
tolerances of England, her taste for liberty and ease, her 
occasional bluster and her boundless conceit, they are 
Falstaff. 

Falstaff embodies all that is gross in England and much 
that is fine; his cowardice, his craft, his habit of flattery 
are no more English than they are Chinese : they are 
merely human. But the outer Falstaff is English, the 
lawless root of him yet more English, for you hate the law, 
and obey it only because you make it in such wise as not 
to chafe you. And he is your soul; he is the Englishman 
who conquered every shore and, a Bible in his hand, planted 
your flag among the savages; he is the unsteady boy who 
ran away to sea, the privateersman who fought the French 
and the Dutch; he is the cheerful, greedy, dull and obsti- 
nate Englishman, who is so wonderfully stupid and so 
wonderfully full of common-sense. Falstaff was never 
curbed by adversity: no more was the English race; it 
was, like him, too vain and too optimistic, too materially 
bounded by its immediate desires. Falstaff, you are the 
gigantic ancestor of the priests, merchants and soldiers 
who have conquered and held fields where never floated the 
lilies of the French or the castles of the Portuguese. Too 
dull to be beaten and too big to be moved, you were the 
Englishman. 


IV 

That is all I have to say, for I am born anew, and all 
my life lies before me, the past effaced. England has 
taken me in her strong, warm arms, and I have pressed my 


424 THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN 


face to her broad bosom. Big, strong heart, I hear you 
beat; there come sorrow, famine, pestilence, and you beat 
no slower; and now fame and victory, there is no hurry 
in your throbbing. Fold me close to you, woman with the 
golden helmet, and hold your trident ready to keep danger 
at bay: I was not the child of your body, let me be the 
child of your heart, because I love you, my 

I hear a soft footfall behind me, then a low voice: 

“ Am I disturbing you ? ” 

I turn, and for a moment consider the young face, 
unmarked of the fleeting years, the smiling, rosy mouth, 
the gentle blue eyes. I clasp the slim, white hand, draw 
towards me the form that so gladly yields. Edith sits 
across my knees, laughs low as I kiss her neck. 

“ Have you much more to write ? ” she asks, at length. 

“ No,” I murmur, “ only one word.” 

“ Let me write it,” says Edith, and there is in her eyes 
an appeal with which mingles security. 

I whisper into her ear as she takes the, pen: . . be- 
cause I love you, my. . . .” Her left hand still in mine, 
she bends forward, and I can see nothing save the pale 
gold tendrils on her neck as she writes the last word: 

. . England.” 


THE END 














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